


the world forgetting, by the world forgot

by copperiisulfate



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-03
Updated: 2010-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 01:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Morgana erases memories for a living, Merlin and Arthur meet for (what they believe to be) the first time, and Gwen remembers everything. AU based loosely on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the world forgetting, by the world forgot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Round 3 of the reel_merlin challenge. I am forever grateful to my beta, pale_prairie, who has been the absolute best. Detailed warnings and notes are [over here](http://copperiisulfate.livejournal.com/12357.html).

_How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!  
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.  
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!  
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd._

\- Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard

 

*

 

**|2004|►merlin|**

He's pretty sure it's his room, what with the splotches of colours, rows and rows of them that he blinks and recognizes as posters. There should be books, probably, somewhere on the floor and in great stacks. Even if he can't quite remember the date, he remembers something about the library and hefty fines, but the effort required to turn his neck outweighs the desire to find out.

His head's full of something with a texture in between fresh lint from the dryer and newly-picked cotton. His mouth's no better though he tries not to think about that. There's a vague thought of a hospital swimming in the back of his head, the smell of disinfectant and loud footfalls until they became a blur of faces overhead. There's the memory of a searing headache until it starts becoming less and less of a memory and he wills himself to close his eyes and just _shut up, please,_ before promptly returning to the comfortable and familiar oblivion of sleep.

*

The next time he opens his eyes, the room has darkened considerably and the curtains are drawn with a thin crack. Faint early evening light casts a single orange line across the covers just below his chest.

This time, he is not alone. He knows its Gwen even before he catches sight of her. He can practically _feel_ her fretting about the room. She's picking up books, CDs and their jewel cases, without much of an idea of what to do with them, and he figures he may as well speak before he laughs.

"It's evening already?" It comes out as more of a croak than anything but it's enough to make Gwen appear at his side in a show of superhuman speed. She has her hand on his pillow, then the side of his face, and if it wasn't for the proximity, he might have missed the almost-dent in her smile.

"How are you feeling, sleepyhead?"

 _Sleepy_ , he wants to say, but tries to lift his head instead and mumble the million dollar question. "What _happened_?"

"You really don't remember?"

And he tells her of what he does. It consists of mostly hazy images of hospital walls and being very heavily sedated. She fills in with the rest, says he had a bit of an accident in the kitchen. Gaius suspected he was attempting to cook because it left an ugly burn, and if that wasn't enough, she adds, "They were worried that you hit your head pretty hard when you fell—"

"I _what_?"

"You were out cold, Merlin. Gaius found you and had no idea how long," and when Merlin's still looking at her blankly, Gwen adds, "but you should be back to one hundred percent soon enough. Or at least that's what he said."

It doesn't explain why he can barely sit up straight but Gwen explains the rest. He has apparently been on a diet of Tylenol 3s and when he's about to ask what for, a sharp jolt of pain greets him from his right hand to the joint in his elbow. He inspects the source to find his hand and part of his forearm almost entirely bandaged. The only visible sliver of skin next to his wrist looks halfway cooked. He can only guess how deeply. So _yes_ , he thinks, that might be a part of it.

" _Great_ ," is the only word that comes out of his mouth.

There is a great deal more that he knows he should probably ask. For now, he's still only maybe fifty percent here so it's probably not a good idea to push his luck with this mental capacity thing.

The frown buried beneath Gwen's smile is more apparent now even if she seems to be fighting it back tight-lipped. There's something of a wistfulness in it, creeping through even though it's as if she has sworn not to let it.

"Gaius says to give it a week but you know I'm here for as long as you need me." She squeezes his good hand before switching on the bedside lamp and handing him a book. "I'm going to check on dinner. You can kill some time with this."

*

Most of that week and the next is filled with foggy days interrupted by sleep, the irritating presence of blisters, and the not-so-irritating presence of Gwen, who comes over almost every day. She helps wash his hair and cooks the meals and coddles him all around even when he tries to bat her off because, _honestly_ , it's not like he got shot.

Gaius cuts down his clinic hours and brings his research home though he still lives mostly in the little corner of the apartment he's fondly dubbed his study. He confirms what Gwen told Merlin earlier about his little accident but his uncle sounds so unperturbed about it all that Merlin figures it must really not have been that big of a deal at the end of the day.

There's a day, after Gwen has fed them and done the dishes and just made her way out, when he catches Gaius looking at him, long and contemplative. Merlin calls him on it but all it really earns him is a shake of the head and a goodnight that sounds far heavier than it has any right to.

Merlin wants to press it then but he remembers what Gwen had said about Gaius finding him after the fact. He sees the lines on his uncle's face and wonders just how many of them he's responsible for.

*

When Gaius is about to head off to the clinic one evening, he calls out that Ms. Kendra from down the hall is home and might drop by to look in on Merlin. "She's wants to make sure that if you need anything—"

 _Honestly_ , thinks Merlin. "I'm twenty-five, Gaius. Tell me why I'm not living by myself again?"

"Because last time, that did not work out so well," and his uncle is quick to add, "you _do_ remember college, don't you?"

"Mostly," Merlin says sheepishly. Admittedly, a lot of it was a haze of liquids and the smoke of things he'd rather not think too hard about. Still, he thinks he had passed as one of the relatively sober ones, and that was probably because Gwen had made a point of keeping him in line.

"That, and the fact that you lack sustainable income. And no, your ongoing fling with that little record store does not count. Do not even get me started on the lack of sustainable common sense." Gaius pulls out his coat and his beaten up backpack that he's had, Merlin's pretty sure, since the days of the Dark Ages. "There's dinner in the fridge."

"You're just trying to prove a point now."

"No, I am leaving now. By the way, your mother called. I told her you had a bit of a fall. You know how she gets. You can elaborate however much you feel is appropriate but try not to worry her too much."

"Elaborate _how_? I don't even _know_ what—" but Gaius is out the door and Merlin's left calling out after air. He groans and knocks a pillow off the couch only to pick it up a moment later. He'd be doing it eventually anyway.

Turns out, he doesn't feel the need to tell his mother much since there really isn't much to tell. Yes, he fell, doing something in the kitchen. _Were you cooking, dear? (Probably?) Yes._ There was a bit of a cut, a bit of blood, and he may have burned himself a little, and kind of passed out, _but no worries, ma. I'm fine now_.

In trying to convince her, he starts believing it himself.

*

Still, there are _days_.

Some edge more on the side of unpleasant than others, and there's a buzzing that comes with them, along with a whole lot else that's difficult to place.

Gwen's been there to wash his hair, hold his hand, change the dressing on the other one, and has spared him the trouble of trying to do things like tie a knot with one hand and his teeth. All things considered, she has been more than great, more than he could ever ask for. Even then—and he hates to think it so he seldom allows himself to do so—she is not here the way he maybe needs her to be, the way he can't quite ask for because he doesn't know the words. Part of it is that, in spite of all the resilience in her smiles, Gwen's an overly sympathetic thing if he ever saw one. She still looks at her empty fishbowl from seventh grade and tears up so he can't help but wonder if she looks at him and pictures him almost-dead as well.

And then there's Will, who has lived in his building for years now, and been a good friend for even longer, but conversation with him had been awkward and stilted ever since Merlin's been back. It's as if they all think they're going to break him if they speak in full sentences, and these days, more than anything, he wishes they'd quit treating him like glass.

It's comforting that Gaius, at least, is more or less still his same old, stern but strange local parental figure. He still treats Merlin like he's some idiot-teenager about to get himself run-over, smacks him on the head (though thankfully less so now considering suspected head injuries and all), but also cooks for him and scolds him and loves him as he always has. Only, there is a certain silence to him now. He doesn't lecture unnecessarily and at length the way he used to and he spends a great deal more time in the study. Merlin tries to blame it on the grant deadlines and the clinic hours all ganging up and taking their toll on him but he supposes he can't quite fault Gaius for earning a living so he lets it slide.

*

And then there are the headaches.

Merlin gathers that they are a normal part of having hit your head. Besides, for the most part, they aren't all that bad.

And then they are.

He brings it up to Gaius and then wishes he hadn't because the frown the man wears in response is the kind that never sat well with Merlin. It's two parts concerned and one part upset with a dash of unmistakeable _fear._ The creases on his forehead are becoming ever-deeper and Merlin wonders if he's made a mistake.

Merlin wakes up the next morning to a bottle of ibuprofen on his bedside table. Which helps. For a bit.

*

When he steps into the record store for the first time in two weeks, he's greeted by Freya, who practically tackles him to the ground with a hug and then pulls back in a rush to clasp a hand over her mouth. "Please tell me I didn't hurt you!"

"I'm fine, honest," he gives her a thumbs-up, happy to have his thumb in working order. Looking around, he says, "It's good to be back."

The store is fairly empty today. Granted, it's a Sunday. He takes a visual inventory of the place which, of course, looks the same as it always does. Still, there's something about the air of it that leaves him unable to bite back a smile. It goes beyond the colours and posters, all that sets Lake Records apart from any music store—no, any store, period—that he's ever been in. It's the people who own it and run it and it shows. He loves that they love this space, have made an effeort to meticulously put bits of themselves in its design. They've handpicked everything from the basecoat of paint to the art on the walls and the kites and old, decorative vinyl that hang from the ceiling. They've handpicked what they sell and handmade the shelves it sits on and handwritten the labels above and below. Taking it all in makes him almost giddy in the moment, a sudden rush of emotion. He tells himself it's all on account of having been away for a bit.

He points up absently. "Is this new music? I like it."

Freya gives him a funny look. "This is Franz Ferdinand, silly. The album came out a couple months back and you _loved_ it." She shakes her head and laughs, "Wow, you really must have hit your head hard."

"Yeah, I keep hearing that." He also keeps thinking that he should probably be more worried about that.

"You know, mom and I came to the hospital but you were asleep. Everyone said you were going to be okay so that was reassuring," Freya eyes him, leaning against the cash counter. "And, believe me, mom was _worried_. She would have hated for anything to happen to her favourite salesboy."

Merlin grins because it is completely like Nimueh to make grand exaggerations like that. "You mean, her _only_ salesboy."

They walk and talk on their way to the backroom where the log of new releases is kept. Freya explains how they had a temp till yesterday but she was all kinds of awful with merchandise. They couldn't blame her though since she only stuck around long enough to cover electronica, soul, and new age properly. "Mom kept comparing her to you and how you picked up this stuff in two days."

"Yeah, well, I did own half of it."

"And that's not even an exaggeration," Freya smiles, handing him the new inventory log. "Plus, you know how it is with our lovely female clientele. They'd never come here if it were just for the music."

Merlin rolls his eyes in spite of the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I missed you too," and he means it.

It goes without saying that Gaius and Gwen are his rocks, his family, but it's been too long since he last left the apartment.

It makes this place feel like oxygen in his lungs after years and years of being underwater.

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

They're sitting on the steps of her front porch when he first mentions it.  
"Gwen," he says, eyes on the street and the cars zooming by, "I think I'm forgetting things."

She swallows hard and asks him, "What kind of things?" and listens steadily as he talks of going through the library books in his room and not remembering how half of them ended.

"It's strange, Gwen. You know me. If you tell me a title, doesn't matter how long ago I read it, I would always know the ending."

"Maybe you just didn't get around to them." She has no idea how or why but she winces as she feels herself becoming a part of this _thing_ that feels so close to en masse deception. She tries not to think of just how much he might be forgetting (how much he has already forgotten). Gaius had said to play it by ear and had argued that some things were probably better left behind. Gwen had begged to differ but she knew it wasn't her place to decide and so she'd kept quiet and waited for Merlin to go about it at his own pace. Most of the time, she's still waiting.

"But I _know_ what I've read." He talks of crossing them off a list and his frustration is growing, building the way it tends to when he can't put his finger on what he knows he should be able to. Her only piece of silent consolation is that there is no way this can last. Merlin is different. Special. It will come back, she tells herself. _It has to._ And Gwen can't decide if she's dreading it or counting on it, biding her time because it's the only way to keep her mouth shut and not despise herself entirely.

 _I'm sorry_ , she thinks, watching him fidget with the hem of his shirt and the frayed holes in the knees of his jeans. She wants to reach out for him, take his hand, tell him, _it's always the in-between that's difficult_ , but that would come too close, be too dangerous.

"After I got back from the hospital, you handed me _Slaughterhouse-Five._ I know _Slaughterhouse-Five_ inside out. I've read it—I don't remember how many but a _lot_ of times. Why can't I remember the ending? I'm not losing my mind, am I—"

" _Merlin_ , you're rambling." And maybe that's harsh, a tad unfair even, but she needs him to not panic. "How long have you known me?"

"High school, junior year. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question. And Will?"

"Near the end of college."

She runs a few more names by him, people he's barely known or been acquainted with to different degrees. Most, he recognizes. He's better with the names of those he's known longer, which is to be expected, but it throws Gwen off that he remembers a substitute teacher in senior year English but not the boy he'd crushed on fiercely from afar throughout freshman year of college.

Very tentatively, she mentions Morgana, and he says, "Yeah, she was your college roommate. Fiesty, pretty one, yeah? She moved a while back but you said you still saw her from time to time."

"Yes, well, she's quite busy with work these days." It doesn't do to talk about Morgana, not with him, not anymore. In the same breath, Gwen adds, "And do you remember Arthur?"

Merlin is unnaturally quiet for a moment. When he speaks, Gwen lets out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "The name sounds familiar. A friend of yours?"

"Um, kind of," she says, and can see it all slotting into place.

"Well, he sort of disappeared off the grid as well," Gwen not-quite-lies, then runs off other names in quick succession, figures that if it hasn't stuck by itself then there is no reason that she should make it. "What about Jenna? And Chris? They used to live around here some time ago. They were a really sweet couple."

Merlin shakes his head and gives her a long look then. "There's something wrong, Gwen."

She catches the fear in his eyes, in his voice, and she concedes a little because this is _Merlin_ and she can't possibly not. She reaches for his arm, tangles her fingers in his bracelets, and says softly, "I'm sure it's just temporary. Short-term effects, y'know? You were hurt but you'll be better soon," and she hopes to god that this one's not a lie, doesn't think she can hold many more of them on her conscience.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

It's been a bizarrely slow week at the firm and he wonders if it's a sign from the universe telling him to return the army of calls and texts and emails that Morgana flung at him the previous week.

Once he has managed to launch himself onto the Main Line and tucked loose balance sheets into the side of his laptop-bag, he collapses on a seat and rings Morgana. _Of course_ , he thinks, when she doesn't answer. There would probably be a glitch in the universe if she had picked up the one time he wanted her to. He doesn't leave a message because it's Morgana and she'll catch his missed call in the next five minutes.

*

She calls back three hours later, waking him up from a nap in front of a rerun of _Friends_. He mumbles something that should be a hello, flips over on his back and blinks against the growing dark. He needs another lamp, possibly something with a sensor, that's smart enough to turn itself on if he's going to keep sleeping through sunsets.

"You called?" Her voice comes through loud but it crackles with bad reception and too much noise in the background.

"Yeah, I—where are you anyway?"

"Out."

"Clearly."

She seems to be stepping out of wherever she was because he can hear her more clearly now. "You can quit being such a big brother and tell me what's up."

"I think you wanted to see me last week." Arthur reaches for the light, _any_ light, and tries to remember how to think while working past the taste of sleep in his mouth. "I finished with a deadline and have no morning audits this week. I thought you'd maybe like to come by and partake in the joys of awful sitcom reruns and takeout Chinese."

"Because misery loves company and all?" He catches a breath of her chuckle over the line. "Sorry, darling. Can't tonight. I owe Gwen a night out."

"Right, of course. Tell her hi." He's leaning against the kitchen counter and, outside, it's starting to rain. "You used to see her a lot more, didn't you?" Absently, he thinks of Gwen and how long it's been since he's seen her himself.

"I've no idea what you're on about but I'll pass on that you miss her pretty face. Rain check on our date?"

The droplets get heavier outside, patter against his windows, their rhythm quickening. "Right. Sure. Have yourselves a good time."

He closes his eyes and waits for an image to form. He can picture a lounge somewhere in Lower Manhattan, bad lighting and loud music, but it's been long enough that the mental image collapses when it comes to Gwen's face.

*

**|►morgana|**

They settle in a corner of the lounge, close to a window, where the music isn't as loud.

"Arthur said hello," Morgana reports, settling back into her seat.

Gwen seems distracted by something outside and Morgana remembers why she avoids window seats. It makes it far too easy for everyone in her life to be even more evasive than they normally are. "It's been a while," Gwen finally says.

"A year, give or take." Morgana's eyes are still on her friend. So far, four men have tried to buy her drinks. All were politely declined but Morgana can't fault them for trying. Even in this harsh light, Gwen looks gorgeous in a swirl of warm colours but there's something about her that's a little off tonight, distracted and bordering on preoccupied. Morgana has known her long enough to be able to read it on her face when there's something on her mind but she still hasn't mastered how to tackle it with crosshair precision.

"It's nothing," Gwen says, slight smile and a shake of her head, an answer to an unvoiced question in the air. "I just miss us, you know? All of us."

And this? This might be the one thing that Morgana has no idea how to approach let alone begin to solve. She has been meaning to ask but didn't know how, not with the knowledge that Gwen is still not over everything that happened a year ago, resulting in the dissolution of _all of us_. And then there is the knowledge, quiet but certain, that Gwen holds her responsible for most (if not all) of it. Morgana would be lying if she said she regretted it because she would do it all over again in a heartbeat if she had to. Nothing will convince her that it wasn't a necessary intervention.

Still, Merlin had been her friend once too, even if he probably doesn't remember it now. She asks what she thinks she ought to have some time ago. "How is he?"

"I don't know, Morgana."

But Morgana knows, or knows almost as much as Gaius at least. Even after the man had stopped working with her and Uther, they spoke regularly, and this thing, this _accident_ , and what it had done to Merlin couldn't _not_ have come up. Gwen doesn't get it though and Morgana thinks to rephrase it to: _all things considered, how are_ you _holding up_ , but Gwen looks at her then, eyes still and serious.

"He's worried, Morgana. He remembers some things and not others, and he's scared. He remembers me, and Gaius and Will and the people he works with. He remembers you. It's vague, but he does."

"But not Arthur," and _really_ , thinks Morgana, at the end of that day, isn't that what everyone has been walking on eggshells about for months now? Gwen looks uneasy, or whatever counts as uneasy when you put it through a Gwen-shaped filter. It comes across more as a vague sense of disquiet.

"Gaius drilled him a bit and said there seemed to be a pattern." Morgana is well aware that she sounds more like she's dictating patient history than talking about an old friend; sometimes, it is the easier way of going about it. "It involves recency and intensity, he thinks. The more recent and intense an experience, the greater the lapse in his memory seems to be. It's a strange kind of," she tries to find the word, wondering if it could fit, and finds it's the closest she's got, "retrograde amnesia almost, one that we've never come across before." She doesn't need to add that Merlin himself is beyond anything anyone has ever come across before.

Gwen fixes a stray strand of her hair and swirls her drink in her glass. "You and your lovely psychobabble," and it's hard to know what's going on in her head.

"Occupational hazard," Morgana shrugs, apologetic. "I just—" she reaches across the table to latch on to Gwen's fingers. "What I'm trying to say is that, it's going to be okay. Gaius is glad that Merlin doesn't have to deal with any of it anymore. Why aren't you?"

"Because," and Gwen speaks with her eyes on their hands, careful, as if measuring her words, "in one way or another, I'm losing all my friends."

Morgana shoots her a funny look, one that Gwen doesn't look up to catch. "You do realize I'm still sitting across from you, right?" It's supposed to be light, playful; it comes out as petulant instead.

"I know." Gwen meets her eyes then and the smile on her face isn't right at all. "You're here, Morgana, but you're not the same."

*

She considers calling Arthur after dropping Gwen home. It's close to midnight and he's probably up but she then decides against it. Arthur's had a difficult time being a morning person as it is and can probably do without her nagging him into the late hours of the night.

She knows it's stupid but she can't help but feel a little bit like crap. Not only did she not manage to see him the one time he was the one to bring it up but the friend she saw instead seemed to be somewhere else altogether.

She gets it. She bore the brunt of what was more or less the same thing in the past year, watching someone she loved fall apart, wholly and totally, and piece himself together again. The only difference was that she'd dragged him by the hand if not pushed him through it because she'd _needed_ Arthur to come out through the other side, for her sake, yes, but mostly for his own.

Morgana never saw the point of carrying excess baggage. It was like an awkwardly dangling vestigial limb, the kind she'd felt everyone was better off without. She's self-aware enough to know that this mindset is probably another occupational hazard. Arthur had once said, and not entirely jokingly, that her jobhad come todefine her. She'd rolled her eyes and told him it wasn't even nearly as complicated as that.

She works for Uther because she understands why he does what he does and the no-regrets mindset that comes with it. There's nothing more to it.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

He spends far too much time at the record store, especially after hours, and especially in the listening booth.

He wonders sometimes if it's possible to turn the music all the way up until it takes away his hearing. He knows it's silly, knows it has to be, and Gaius has given him long and drawn-out speeches all his life about kids today and how this generation will suffer from hearing loss collectively at the age of thirty anyway given their rock concerts and earphone-mania and such. Merlin's not generally one for self-destruction only that sometimes the curiosity sort of runs wild.

There is that and the fact that something else is going on here, _here_ being his head. No, he's (usually) pretty sure he's not crazy or heading in that direction but there are moments when headaches take on a life of their own, forming a throbbing pulse of sorts that grows louder until he can feel something like a crackle, like static in clothing fresh from the dryer. And when he can practically hear the tiny shocks fire in quick succession, he has to reconsider a lot of the logic behind his sanity.

The sounds are just that for the most part and they tend to follow a pattern, getting a bit louder and more intense if he's in a particularly crappy mood. Other times, they come out of nowhere and he has to make a bit of an effort at not being entirely terrified then. It's as if something inside him wants _out_ , cries out, all suffocation and impatience, and he has to press against it, apply pressure as if to a bleeding wound, thinking, _no you don't_.

*

He spends the next few days trying to piece it together by himself.

There is no absolutely _no way_ he's telling Gaius because he knows that Gaius would pull out his DSM _so_ fast and Merlin knows his chances when it comes to _that_. Moreover, he has read enough about antipsychotics and, long story short, they scare him half to death; meds in general do. He's had an unfriendly relationship with them from as far back as he can remember, so thanks but no thanks, and he will be avoiding any medical advice that screws with his brain chemistry like the plague.

The thing with thinking it through on his own is that it requires the kind of effort his mind is not willing to supply, not now and not for some time to come. He tries for ignorance then, lets himself be pulled into the exhaustion of being on his feet at the record store most days. Later, other things serve as distractions, like late nights with Will watching Harold and Kumar on their trek to Whitecastle, or watching Gwen at work, deft fingers stringing metal clasps and beads together for her friends or the flea market. Other days, the music helps, replacing the pulse in his head with its own so long as it's loud and furious and absolutely relentless. There are days where he believes it to be genuinely more potent than the ibuprofen.

*

He manages to kill his days like this until one Sunday evening. Merlin's getting ready to close up shop for the day when a customer walks in looking _nothing_ like their usual clientele.

He's all broad shoulders and golden hair, red dress-shirt and black dinner jacket, and Merlin is maybe a little bit fixated on the line of his jaw, or the glimpses he manages to catch of it from between the revolving shelves at the other end of the store. The man seems to shuffle around from genre to genre, finally settling on something from the store's very small Top 40 section. The fact that they have it at all is really all on Freya. Nimueh had gone along with it to boost sales since they were the only music store for miles. Classy businesswoman that she was, she'd proposed that they may as well reap the benefits and it wasn't up to Merlin to protest.

By the time the man comes to the check-out counter, Merlin's eyes are nowhere near the counter itself and he wants to hit himself for it a little. He can swear he's going to make a complete and utter fool of himself with this transaction, probably by hitting the _VISA_ key instead of Debit or something, which is pretty much what he tends to do when he is facing anything resembling ridiculously attractive strangers at work.

It is fortunate, however, that this one manages to spare him the embarrassment because the stranger ceases to be ridiculously attractive the instant he opens his mouth to speak.

*

**|►arthur|**

"For a music store," Arthur looks around, "the music here is surprisingly difficult to find."

 

The guy at the cash counter rings out Arthur with a light, thinly-veiled snort at the album as if to say _Hillary Duff? Really?_ "Most of our customers seem to manage just fine."

"It's a gift," Arthur counters gruffly and maybe a little unnecessarily, but _it_ _is_. It's for Lance's niece because she's turning ten, and Arthur's pretty sure that ten is too young to question a kid's taste in music.

The sales guy seems to think differently because as the bill prints, he's giving Arthur the kind of look that makes him fight the urge to say something petty and defensive. He should not need to justify his purchases to a guy named—he practically laughs out loud at the sight of the name-tag— _Merlin_.

"So tell me, _Mer_ lin," he means to match his tone with a sneer but can't quite manage it. The combination of big ears and even bigger headphones around a pale neck covered with threads and cords of _every_ colour to _ever_ exist stops him in his tracks. Arthur can feel his face twisting into what he's pretty sure is a gaping motion of the I-don't-even-know-where-to-begin-with-you variety as he tries to not feel too affronted by the chaotic display of, well, _person_ , before him. He grinds out, "What would _you_ suggest for a ten year old girl on her birthday?"

"Someone in her life with better taste in music for starters." The guy is quite obviously biting back a smirk as he places the paper-bagged CD on the counter. "We usually leave tween pop to Target and the like. I'm surprised we even carry this. Probably Freya again," he mutters, and Arthur knows he shouldn't even bother to ask. Still, this is just _bad_ marketing.

"Are you _trying_ to put this store out of business?" Arthur taps his fingers against the counter top, waiting to get his credit card and his bill and be out of this ridiculous place with its ridiculous paper bags and even more ridiculous sales staff. He's pretty sure being a music snob is part of the job description in these dingy indie record stores but he'd never thought that being so irritatingly judgmental of the customers (not to mention of the _merchandise_ they were buyingfromyour store) was also on the list. "At any rate, I have somewhere to be and this place happened to be on the way. Sometime today would be nice." Whatever this Merlin fellow mumbles after that is barely audible and totally lost on him.

Their fingers brush when he hands Arthur his credit card bill and a pen to sign it with, and Arthur catches a glint of silver on his wrist, peeking out from below the sleeve of the first of many layers. Arthur swears it's shaped like a tiny lightning bolt but given the rest of this guy's get-up, it shouldn't be all that surprising. The momentary distraction does not make him miss the flickering of the fluorescent lights overhead. Sliding the receipt and the pen back over the counter, he grabs his own copy and, quirking a thumb upwards, says, "Maintenance. Might want to get on that," and he makes his exit too fast to catch the sarcasm that's inevitably coming his way.

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

_Blue bead then black bead and blue and black and blue and black and on and on and on..._

She's making Merlin a new bracelet since his old one snapped at work. He told her she didn't have to, that it was okay because it was his fault, getting it caught in the storage room on some stray nail in a shelf. She can picture the string of threads tearing, tiny blue and black and white beads slipping off and away. She knows she should have used something stronger so she's going over this one twice with French wire.

It's not really as big of a deal as Merlin's making it. Sure, they're tiny and the smaller eye needles are kind of a necessary pain for these ones but it's the first bit of jewelry she learned to make on her own. Over the years, she'd turned it into a thing of hers to make one for everyone.

It was a shame she was out of white beads. She had given it thought to go running to the craft store in the morning but her mind had been racing tonight, refusing to let her sleep. Her hands had needed something to do then, something quick and well-rehearsed, and the pattern of blue and black and blue and black was keeping her hands steady and her mind away from her once-friends and all the secrets they were keeping from each other and from themselves. These were the people she had once adorned with her strings and her beads, and adored, with her heart and soul, her entire being. Now, she can't speak to them of the things they have willfully forgotten because that would be a breach of confidence, of a trust between her and their past selves, and she is bound to them and all their oaths even if they are no longer around.

She tries to not let the loneliness creep out more than it absolutely needs to, instead, tries to thread her memories into these bits of metal and plastic and glass and wood. With every twist and snip and knot of string, she gives what is left of her away to them.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2001|►|**

She's sitting on a beanbag chair, close to the window, with a rainbow of cords and beads around her feet and sun pouring in from behind her back.

Merlin had said that it set her hair aglow, in those words exactly, when he'd first walked in with Will in tow.

Will had groaned and said, "I'm stuck here with two girls," and then turned to Gwen with, "please do him a favour and stop making those things for him."

"So tell me," Will says to Merlin now, as they wait for _Dogma_ to finish rewinding on Gaius' dinosaur-era VCR. "Do you ever give her anything in return?"

"He has a point," Gwen calls out, teasing, eyes and hands still on her work. She's seen _Dogma_ anyway, maybe one time too many, and maintains it's overrated with Alan Rickman being maybe the only amazing thing about it. "Did you know that there's a Hindu festival in which girls tie holy threads around the wrists of men they consider their brothers and get gifts or money in return?"

"Actually" Merlin throws over his shoulder, "I _do_ know. Did _you_ know that originally it started with women tying the thread as a request for protection? How about I offer you my manly protection and we'll call it even."

Will laughs at that and says, "You sound like your boyfriend," and Gwen has to silently agree when he adds, "only that from him, it kind of sounds legit and all."

"I resent that!" But she knows better and Merlin _totally_ does not. "I can beat people up. With my mind. Kind of."

"Sweetheart," Gwen laughs, clutching the bracelet she's making for Morgana close so that the beads don't go flying this way and that. "You can't even tell it what to do. Maybe you can get really angry one day and fry my toaster if it wrongs me, then we'll call it even."

" _Fine_ ," he says, absolutely set on this. "Every bracelet equals protection from one misbehaving appliance."

Will glances at Merlin's wrists. "Looks like you've got a few kitchens covered."

*

The bracelet she puts together for Will is white string and silver wire with matching beads, the smallest kind she could find.

Will left early so he isn't there to appreciate it but in the late afternoon light, Merlin remarks that it looks like the beginnings of chainmail. This earns him a smile from Gwen and an opinion of, "Well, he is quite brave."

"He's afraid of heights. And the dark. And clowns. We were at the fair, and he wouldn't go on the Ferris wheel, and when he did, Morgana said he nearly wet his pants."

"That may be," she says, "but when it counts, I think Will could be quite the white knight."

"Oh no," and she knows that look of mock horror. "You're crushing on him, aren't you? Well, you crush on everyone so I suppose I shouldn't even be surprised."

Gwen rolls her eyes. "You know you make me sound like a tramp the way you put it." Crushes are so simple, so transient, she wants to say. Her fault is that she falls in love, with everything and everyone and often wishes she didn't have such a tendency towards it. It's not the we-must-be-together-forever kind of falling either but her heart swells for the people that she sees the beauty in.

Merlin calls himself a classical optimist but even he had once told her that she saw far too much beauty in everyone and couldn't seem to let go of it. She doesn't know why or how that's supposed to be a bad thing, to love indiscriminately. The danger was probably in the intensity. She loved too deeply right along with loving too much.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

Arthur finally sees Morgana the night after Camelot Neuroservices' annual research conference. He finds himself on one side of the booth at a sushi joint Morgana dug up, nursing his green tea and wishing they served black coffee at this place.

He tries to hum and nod in the right places as she raves about some new equipment they'll be getting at the lab and the high-res imaging and how she'll be better able to take a peek inside their clients' anterior amygdalae. Also, apparently her newest publication on implicit memory just got some coverage on Channel 4 news last Sunday, and she throws in the conversational, "Did you see it, Arthur?"

He says he did, and he really had. He just happened to forget most of it like he forgot what the temperature and the probability of precipitation was on that day even though he distinctly remembers seeing that on Channel 4 too. He's proud of her, really and truly, but as far as the company, its research, and its services are concerned, he could not really be less invested. It's technically a disgrace from both sides of the equation, and he's well aware of it to the point where he'd once gone to see his father and discovered that Morgana's coworkers had nicknamed him the Renegade Prince of Camelot Neuroservices. (Although, come to think of it, he's not entirely sure that his father wasn't behind that one.) He's also aware that the sensible thing for any sensible son to do would be to follow in his father's footsteps and take over the reins of a project of not only such remarkable but its near-frightening degree of success.

Even if Uther had tried time and time again to throw Arthur into the midst of it in one form or another, Arthur could never feign interest in his father's work for too long. Despite ample media coverage on the lawsuits and the controversies around the company, it wasn't even that the morality of it stopped Arthur. He knew what drove his father behind it all: the desire to help others forget the kind of pain and suffering he could not bring himself to erase. Regardless of how convoluted that logic may have been, his father had good intentions, and Arthur couldn't take that away from him. Morgana, however, was easily immersed and investedin her work, and given her beyond freakish enthusiasm and the tendency to be both a perfectionist and a workaholic, she thrived at Camelot. All in all, it worked out quite nicely except for when people would mistaken Morgana as Uther's biological child and Arthur as the adopted one. That one always went over well at the cocktail parties.

All things considered, he's convinced he's doing his family a great service by listening to Morgana wax poetic about brain-imaging on a weeknight. The last Arthur remembered of anything resembling anatomy, let alone neuroanatomy, was the bio dissection in his junior year of high school. Much to his father's chagrin, it had been enough to turn him off and run far, far away in the opposite direction, towards the kind and clean world of numbers. He hopes his father keeps his professional intentions focused on Morgana entirely and never look back at the idea of Arthur handling of a business that dealt so obsessively and extensively with—well— _brains_.

Even now, there are times, like _right now_ , when Morgana talks about the electrocution of brain cells necessary for selective and targeted memory erasure and Arthur can't help but feel a little ill, and even a little miserable for reasons he can't point out. He thinks it might just be that he feels sorry for the brain cells or something. Poor bastards never got a say in any of it.

*

Morgana offers to drive him back but he lets her drop him to Long Island City station instead. The commute has sort of grown on him now.

The station is fairly busy, even for a weeknight, and especially for this hour. It's getting darker earlier these days but he likes the way the air hits his lungs with the chill of early autumn. It wakes him up and adds an edge to his senses. This, perhaps, is what leads him to pick up on it when some discourteous idiot blasts his music at maximum volume like he owns the place. It's some clinky tune with next to nonexistent bass and Arthur can't decide if that makes it less or more outrageous. When he turns towards the sound, there's a skinny kid standing some distance away, wrapped up in too much subzero winter gear for this time of year and the most enormous headphones Arthur has ever seen.

He's well aware that his glaring will do no good considering the recipient of it wouldn't budge if there was an explosion two feet away, but Arthur's glare turns into observation at some unidentifiable point, and he blames it entirely on the light. It has to be something about the harsh overhead lighting being the only light source on the platforms at this hour and the way it illuminates and casts shadows on what little he can see of the face behind the gigantic headphones, the sharp cut of cheekbones _—_

His view is interrupted by the guy pulling his neon-orange scarf— _seriously?—_ higher up around his neck. And that's when Arthur catches a flash of colours at his wrist and thinks to hit his head against the nearest wall because _now_ he remembers.

It's Music Snob, with the funny name that Arthur could've swore he would never forget and has, of course, completely forgotten.

He thinks of approaching him, making some snide comment just to make conversation so he can figure out his name again because this is going to nag at him now. He half considers following through on it but the train's pulling up and people are pushing against one another with such speed and capacity to get inside that he loses sight of record-store boy.

*

It's when he makes his way to bed that night that it hits him.

He fumbles for a pen, fails, and flicks on a light and searches for it in the nearest drawer. Inbright red ink, he scrawls it on the back of his hand. _Merlin._

This time, he won't forget.

*

Arthur has several jumbled dreams that night but only a few stick with him after waking.

The first has Morgana sitting across from him in a coffee shop, drawing a human brain on napkins from three different angles and labeling the lobes.

She labels one as Arthur, one as herself, one as Gwen, and leaves the last blank. On the blank, she draws a little lightning bolt and because he doesn't know what to say to that, he asks her whose brain this is.

She smiles, mysterious and a little sad, but maybe he's just imagining that.

 _It doesn't matter_ , dream-Morgana says. _We are all the same._

The second dream is full of snatches of conversation that he doesn't quite catch. There are hushed voices and mournful murmurs and he overhears enough to know that Morgana and his father are talking about his life and he is somewhere in the room. He is either asleep or dead but he can't know for sure.

There are others in between, almost certainly, but they fade and pale against the last.

It's a vivid shock of heat and touch, of and arms and legs wrapped around him, up close and intense, and he thinks he should be able to pull away to breathe but he physically _cannot_ , has no desire to. All the while, there's a hum of something that sounds like a breathless chuckle and another voice that sounds remarkably like his own. The voice that's his is saying a name, low in his throat and _desperate_.

He wakes up breathing hard, blood rushing out of his extremities and down, down, down as he sits up. He presses his fingers against his forehead and groans into the palm of his hand, thinking, _what in the world—_

Apparently, his subconscious is obsessed with brains and death and some annoying kid with attitude he saw once at a record store and once again at the rail station. He blames it on listening to Morgana's research babble and the fact that he can't even remember the last time he got laid.

Other than that, he's got nothing.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2003|►morgana|**

She bides her time, gives Arthur a total of three weeks to mope in solitude, and then puts her spare key to his apartment to good use. She enters his room, finds him buried under the covers from head to toe, and practically rips his curtains open.

"Rise and shine, Princess."

This gets his attention and earns her an aggravated groan, followed by, "You really need to stop letting yourself in like that."

"Well, it's not like I'd be interrupting anything..." She winces as she catches herself a little too late. "Sorry, it's probably still too soon for that."

"Why are you here and why must you fuss with everything? Leave the blinds. For god's sake, _Morgana_!" He'll never admit it's a whine when she draws them up, up, up and bright yellow-white daylight filters in.

"You need to wake up and get out of this place. And," she makes a face at the bottle by her feet, kicks it, and hisses, " _Arthur_."

Her big baby of a brother puts a pillow over his head. "You're not my mother and I don't need to hear it. Just. _Get. Out_." Like hell she is. When the lack of moving footsteps makes it perfectly clear, he grinds out a muffled, "Couldn't sleep, alright? It was late. I'm catching up now."

"Do you have a headache?"

"I have a bloody migraine now because you will not stop talking and you've sworn to turn my room into a greenhouse."

She pulls the pillow away from him and levels him with a glare. " _Arthur_."

"I am _not_ hung over. Just leave and I'll be fine."

"Defensive much," she says lightly, and tosses the pillow back at him. "I'm making coffee, and I brought some left over baked goods from the conference last night."

"How thoughtful," he mutters, burrowing himself back in his bed.

*

"I get that you still feel like shit," she says to him over the kitchen table, "and not to rub it in or anything but what did you think was going to happen?"

"What part of _I don't want to talk about it_ do you not understand?"

"The _I gave you three weeks to not talk about it_ part. So tell me."

"I thought it was going to change," he says around a mouthful of banana bread and makes a face as he sips the coffee. "What _is_ this?"

"Dominican. Light roast. Oh yes, and not spiked." He scowls at her and she adds, nonchalant, "What specifically?"

"Hell, I don't know? _Everything_."

She'd been so silly to think that _that_ would be the worst of it.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

He's walking with Will and Gwen one night before they drop Will off to his aunt's. Will has always hugged Gwen goodnight and so it's a gesture that Merlin doesn't even register as strange anymore right up until he sees a shadow of movement at his side and catches the unmistakable sound of, well, _kissing_.

He cannot for the life of him figure out what the hell exactly is going on here and why one of them couldn't just have told him like normal people do. He wouldn't have minded at all. Hell, he would have given them his blessing even if he's pretty certain that Gwen can do better. It does explain the strange behavior on their part that Merlin had thought he'd been imagining. At least that meant one less checkbox on his mental log of crazy.

He walks in step with her on the way to her place, waits for her to bring it up on her own but gets idle talk about the news and the weather instead until he can't take it anymore.

"What _was_ that, Gwen?" No, he will not give her the opportunity to misunderstand. "You and Will? Why didn't you say anything?"

Predictably, she gets flustered and starts talking over herself about circumstances but he's not buying it. "Will you just listen?" she finally says. "I had some bad times, okay? He was the only one I could talk to for a time."

No matter how much Merlin wills it not to, this one cuts worse than a knife. "And where was I?"

"You don't—"

"Don't date girls, I get it, but since when has that made me someone you couldn't talk to?"

"It's not about that." She tries to still her voice but Merlin already knows he's pushed her, or pushed _something_ at any rate because Gwen's got her fists clenched the way she does when she's trying not to scream or cry.

"Gwen," he whispers, feeling like shit all at once, because, oh hell, _Gwen_. "I'm sorry," for whatever he's done that's left her like this, so unable to meet his eyes without that forlorn look on her face. He has never known how to ask about it so he has always left it alone and but she catches his eye now and waves him off with a hand.

"I know you're blaming yourself but it's not your fault. It's just everything that's happened. You were hurt so bad, and when you came back, you weren't the same and I was worried that you would never be."

 _I'm still not,_ _am I?_ He hates that it's become a recurring theme of sorts. Pre-accident Merlin and pre-accident feelings and memories and relationships, and the great divide between all of that and everything his life has become now. "Why does no one ever talk to me about it?"

"Because," she says, "I'm just glad you're here and that's what I want to remember when I look at you."

Something like a wave of nausea washes over him and he doesn't want to talk about this anymore. Maybe they're right, maybe avoidance and ignorance and all those things they're all trying to pull off are there for a reason. They seem to _work_ even if only for so long.

"Anyway, it hasn't been working out with Will. We're better off as friends and we both know it. We're just trying to taper off slowly." It doesn't help, thinks Merlin. It just makes him wish that he had kept his mouth shut and minded his own business when things were maybe going to start being okay for at least someone around here. "It's not your fault," she repeats, and in that moment she sounds so much like his mother, when she'd sat his four year-old self down and told him that he wasn't the reason his father had left, that she could no longer take care of him, that he would have to go live with Uncle Gaius from now on. And he does now what he had done then, nods silently and doesn't believe a word of it.

*

**|►gwen|**

With Will, it was never really much of anything besides someone who knew what she knew, remembered what she remembered, and made her feel less alone in all of it. In her right mind, she knew that she could manage all that with a friend just fine. It was just that first Morgana then Arthur then Merlin and her whole world had shifted upside down. Will was the only thing, the only person, right side up who'd grabbed on to her arm and made sure she didn't fall, didn't disappear or go mad when everyone and everything she'd ever known had become nothing more than a shell of a past self, insides discarded with the memories. Her whole life had become a collage of memories left behind for no one to remember.

Will had said (just as she had told herself a number of times) that at least her friends were alive and well, happier than they had been in years. And she'd thought, _I know, I know,_ but the small, selfish voice was persistent, desperate and forsaken, and it would not stop asking, _but_ _what about me? Why did they leave me?_

In those moments, she'd had to close her eyes tight, too tight, to talk sense into herself.

She hates that she's knee-deep in this conspiracy that she so fiercely resented from the start. Maybe she'll have an answer for Merlin as soon as she figures out how to phrase, _can't talk about it to you because you were the bad times_ , in some articulate way.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

It's Thursday and nearly six in the evening when the storefront bell chimes and Merlin turns his head to see a young, bright-eyed girl walk in, clutching her portable CD player tightly in a hand and a small, baby blue bag in the other. She meets Merlin's eyes and he flashes a smile her way before turning back to the customer he's currently ringing out. Distractedly, he hopes a parent is in tow and soon too because even if this place isn't all that big or easy to get lost in, the kid looks very young and, as Gaius says, it _is_ New York.

"Freya," he says, over his shoulder towards the other till, "keep an eye on her. I'll handle cash."

He's all caught up in swiping cards and bagging CDs and pulling out a collector's edition vinyl from behind the counter for a customer when he thinks he catches a familiar voice. He scans the floor, and there, the three of them are huddled by the Top 40 corner, Freya, the little girl, and the back of a distinctly blond head that he can swear he's seen—

The customer in from of him politely clears her throat and Merlin mumbles an embarrassed apology, hands her the bill and her bag, and tells her to have a good night when she tells him to rock on.

Freya comes up to cash when the store has calmed down and can't seem to stop cooing.

"Merlin, she's _precious_. She owns everything ever by The Spice Girls," and she goes on about how she thinks she has finally met someone she can bond with over her musical sensibilities. "You and mom can ramble on about Joy Division and Morrissey all you like now and I swear I will no longer whine about the bitter swell of parental neglect as long as we can keep her. Plus," she brings her voice down to a whisper, "her uncle or whoever that is, is really, really good looking. You will not disagree with me on this one."

The girl comes up to the cash then, clutching Ryan Cabrera's _Take It All Away_ and is so darned gleeful about it that he can't even bring himself to scorn her for buying into the pop idol culture. "Hi," she beams. "I asked Freya if I could listen to this in my CD player before I buy it but she said that you have a really awesome listening booth in the corner, with really huge headphones—kind of like the ones you're wearing—but I have to ask you to put the CD in the player for me. I'm Maria by the way, and this place is _really_ cool."

Freya shoots him an _I-told-you-so_ look and he can practically see the hearts and stars in her eyes, and _fine_ , he would not be entirely opposed to keeping this kid around. Coming out of the cash alcove, he extends his hand to her. "I'm Merlin." She shakes it.

Unthinkingly, Merlin spares a quick glance towards the Top 40 section and then the other end of the cash counter, and there he is, watching Merlin with an amused look on his face. It's unmistakably the same guy who had come in and given him flak last time. Merlin would say something, but Maria's standing there looking up at him expectantly and then there's the fact that he's cut off preemptively by the man who says, "Thanks for helping her out." The highly entertained look still does not leave his face, not even when he adds, " _Mer_ lin," and Merlin has to wonder what _is it_ with the annoying inflection. He also thinks that he really needs to find out this guy's name and harass him back. He hopes it's just as ridiculous as his own.

Freya's eyes shoot back and forth between them, and then narrow. "Do you two know each other?"

Merlin says, "No," just as the man says, "Yes." He then goes on to clarify, "I was here the other week, and _Mer_ lin here was kind enough to help me out."

Freya shoots Merlin an especially betrayed look then, and he thinks, _I can explain,_ but goes with, _screw it_. He'll deal with it later because poor Maria has been waiting for quite some time now.

*

Somehow, it's here, sitting in the listening booth next to Maria, who is lost in her Ryan Cabrera, that he thinks he can see clearly why Freya fought to keep her Top 40.

Maria hums along to _Exit to Exit_ and her delight at the prospect of a listening booth is so contagious that he almost doesn't have the heart to sneak the few albums he grabbed from the shelves into the player. It makes him wish they had more young customers coming in because although the indie music scene and its crowd is the one he's come to know best, there's something about kids and their complete disregard for what's mainstream or not so long as it's catchy. That, and they don't make fun of Merlin's guilty pleasure music.

He will probably take it with him to the grave but he finds himself humming along to Vanessa Carlton on days he's closing on his own. He's pretty sure that is probably not considered very impressive and Freya would probably never let him live it down with all the fuss he's given her over the years. That said, he maintains it as fact that Vanessa Carlton can play piano and sing like no one's business and, at the end of the day, that speaks for itself.

Other than providing him with musical epiphanies, their listening session proves to be highly informative. She tells him about her accompanying chaperone, volunteering information in that way kids tend to once they're on about something. She calls him Uncle Arthur (and Merlin tries not to feel too dismayed because that's such an ordinary name and he can't possibly do anything with that), and goes on to add that he's not really her uncle, but her Uncle Lance's best friend. After her parents split up, Uncle Lance bought her a portable CD player and Uncle Arthur didn't want her listening to rock from the eighties so he took on the responsibility of filling up her music collection. Merlin has to fight off the urge to laugh at the irony of that and hold her hand in sympathy because, well, any child who had Uncle Arthur feeding them music is very unfortunate indeed. He tells her that as a compassionate human being, he cannot allow Arthur to continue his crime against humanity, which makes her laugh and come to his defense at once. "It's not bad!"

"Yes, well, that's because it's all you've heard. Consider this your re-education."

He manages to expose her to Arcade Fire, and she loves them, which gives her at least twenty additional points in his book. He's not so lucky with The Cure, but she sees a Frou Frou album lying around and asks him to play that, _oohs_ and _aahs_ at it, and he thinks he can definitely let that one slide.

Freya's working cash when they return and Merlin leans back against the counter as Maria puts her three CDs on the counter. Arthur pulls out his wallet but she bats his hand away, saying, "This is from the birthday money from Uncle Lance. He told me to spend it," and Arthur backs off with his hands raised against his chest. Freya gives her ridiculous discounts on the Ryan Cabrera and Arcade Fire. And before Freya can manage to look heartbroken about having to make her choose between one of them if she wants to keep the third, the girl seems to have done the math in her head and puts it aside. "I'll get it some other day."

"Sorry, sweetie," Freya shoots her an apologetic smile. "I'll put that one aside for you for next time."

Maria nods, putting her change back in a coin-purse that gets tucked into her blue bag, and Arthur casually comes up to Merlin's side then, leans over and whispers in his ear. "Can you distract her, please?" And it's not really a time to question it.

Merlin taps the girl on her shoulder and asks if she wants to see the vinyl collection. She looks to Arthur, who nods, and Merlin catches Arthur slip a twenty over the counter before he turns away. Freya bags the Frou Frou and looks like she's half in love, and Merlin doesn't even try to fight off the smile.

*

On her way out, Maria thanks him, and turns to Arthur. "Did you know his name is Merlin? You should get him to help with your magic tricks."

"Magic tricks?" Freya voices it just as he thinks it.

Arthur runs a hand over his face. "Let's go, Maria. Lance is going to pick us up soon."

"But Uncle Arthur, you should tell them about my birthday, and how your show was _so great_. My friend Gina wants to be a magician because of him. Anyway," she turns back to Merlin, "Gina wanted him to perform at her mom's birthday but he said he'd need an assistant if he was going to do magic for grown-ups."

"Maria," Arthur says from between his teeth, but there is no way Merlin is going let him stop her now. If he ever sees this guy again, he is going to have a field day with this.

"And I was thinking, with a name like Merlin—"

"Okay," Arthur grits out. "Kiddo, we gotta go before we embarrass ourselves further."

"I think it's precious," Freya grins.

"Positively _adorable_ ," Merlin chimes in, catching Arthur's eye for an instant before Arthur breaks away.

"Well, thank you for all your help," Arthur says to his shoes, "and have yourselves a good night."

All in all, it's been the most entertaining day Merlin has had at work since probably ever.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

When Maria asks to go back to the record store, Arthur half hopes that they have a high staff turnover. He's certain that they're going to make a point to strip away his remaining dignity on sight.

Maria is a good kid, really, but sometimes she talks too much. He does not need two strangers to know that he performs magic for the children of his close friends (very, very rarely, and only on special occasions).

On the plus side, Arthur hasn't been having any more wildly inappropriate dreams involving people he's just met so there is that.

He returns twice more with Maria, who has developed something of a love affair with the listening booth. Whenever Freya is there, it becomes an implicit rule that if they come in during off-peak hours then Maria can hang out there all she likes.

*

It has become an involuntary reflex of sorts, taking that route to Penn station on the days he gets off early from work.

It's been two weeks since he'd first brought Maria here. He has already scanned the shelves and given the cash and the back aisles a twice-over. The only staff in sight is an older woman with a pale face, harder and more defined than Freya's, and a darkly painted mouth. It's framed by a mass of dark curls and braids and Arthur thinks he catches a resemblance. For a moment, he stops to wonder if this is a family business or if hiring pale, dark-haired hippie-types is just the norm for this place. The woman's name-tag reads, _Nimueh_ , and under that, _Manager._

Nimueh looks up from her place by the check-out counter where she has sheets of bar-code labels and an open laptop. "Can I help you?"

Feeling a little flustered, he thanks her, says he's just looking even though he has no idea for what exactly. He passes another quick glance through the spaces in between the shelves behind him.

He finds himself walking towards the wall with the vinyl collection, and admittedly, it is fairly impressive. The store makes up for its lack in the vinyl variety with the mere _age_ of what they have at hand. It reminds Arthur of the old turntable at his father's house. He blinks against the faint memory of the grainy sound, against his mother's voice, singing—

And a voice chooses that moment to cut in from behind. Arthur turns around far too quickly and nearly loses his balance. "I was wondering if we'd be seeing you again." There's a ghost of a smile playing at Merlin's lips.

And Arthur's breath comes out in a huff of a laugh. _Likewise_ , he thinks.

*

Inevitably, Merlin brings it up the next time Arthur's in, browsing for an album for Morgana. Merlin recommends _Boys for Pele_.

" _So,_ "and Merlin sounds all too intent. "Are you going to tell me about the magic?"

Arthur wonders just how long he's been waiting to bring that up. "Couldn't resist, could you?"

It gets even more outrageous when Freya drops whatever she's shelving and hovers closer. "There is _no way_ I am missing this."

Arthur soldiers on awkwardly because it's worth a shot. "That would be breaking the magician's code."

Merlin scoffs and mumbles something along the lines about there being no such thing until Freya cuts him off with, "No, he's right. A magician never reveals his tricks."

It's adorable how much she's into it. Arthur thinks he should start bringing her along if he ever performs again. She would do _wonders_ for crowd morale.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

Later in the week, Merlin checks the answering machine after work and finds a message from Gwen. It's innocuous and unremarkable enough; she asks him how he is, says hello to Gaius, and that she wants to swing by some time. Her voice is just as rife with apology as the last time they talked and he doesn't know why but it makes him more reluctant to call her back.

Gaius is in the study, and by the sound of the voices, in a conference call with someone from Texas and Southern California. There's a post-it note on the door with: _Phone meeting till 9. Dinner's in the fridge,_ and Merlin flicks on the news and shuffles over kitchen tile to nuke his veggie lo mein.

Camelot Neuroservices has made it onto television again. No headlines this time, just something on the side thrown in right after the business report. It's the third lawsuit against the company this year and it's become so routine that everyone takes it in stride. The anchors turn it into a commentary on private medical procedures and then the overarching state of the healthcare system, and it goes on in that way until it gets diluted by the rest of what is wrong with the world. If this wasn't Merlin's first meal in the last seven hours, he thinks he would probably have lost his appetite a little.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|1998|►arthur|forgotten|**

The first time they meet is when Arthur is visiting Morgana at her dorm room in college. Rather, when he's running low on patience and waiting for her to get ready so that they can go see his father for the company's awards dinner. Every year, they had tried to whine and talk their way out of it but, just as surely, every year, they had ended up going.

Arthur is so intently alternating between glaring at his watch and at Morgana, who has tried on five pairs of shoes and is now on her sixth, that he practically misses the lanky hipster kid on Gwen's bed with his earphones in and eyes glued to a paperback on his lap.

Arthur thinks the kid looks like a joke, at this angle at least, from where Arthur stands in the doorway. He's all big ears and pale skin and too-long limbs clad in rainbow colours. Gwen tries to talk Arthur into coming inside and taking a seat because, "You know her, Arthur, and she's going to go through at least five more pairs," and he eventually caves.

Now that he's closer, Arthur thinks, _holy cheekbones_ , but Gwen seems to realize just then that they've never met. Clasping her hands, she apologizes for being rude and says, "Arthur, this is Merlin. We went to high school together. We have developmental psych together. Oh, and world lit."

 _Of course you do_ , Arthur thinks. He certainly looks the part.

" _Merlin_ ," she says, gets no response, and Arthur shakes his head. He thinks of the kind of life someone would have had to endure with a name like that.

"Hit him with a pillow," Morgana offers from her closet, and Gwen does just that.

"The _hell_ , Gwen?" He nearly jumps, pulling out an earphone. "This is the best part."

"This is Arthur, Merlin. Morgana's brother."

"Yeah?" Merlin seems puzzled for a moment, before he comes out with, "Wow, you two look nothing alike."

Arthur figures this Merlin fellow probably doesn't know Morgana well enough to be aware of their atypical family. It's not his place to clarify anyway. "Nice to meet you too," Arthur offers, eyes shifting to Morgana again, and tapping his foot impatiently. "For god's sake, how do you even _keep_ twenty pairs of shoes in a dorm room closet? The ones you're wearing look fine."

"What if it starts raining?" Morgana preemptively whines.

"Dad sent a car for crying out loud. Heaven forbid the princess get her feet wet." He slouches on Gwen's chair and can already feel a headache coming on. And this is all before the four hours worth of speeches he's going to have to sit through tonight.

"Ah, I think I see it now," Merlin says quietly before going back to his book and his music.

Minutes that feel like hours later, he leaves with Morgana in such an exasperated rush that he barely pays mind to anything else.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

Nimueh being here always tends to take the pressure off of Merlin on the weeknights and so, this Thursday, he's taking it slow. He's got an earphone in and he's humming along to TV on the Radio's new EP as he restocks the new releases, so lost in his zone that he _almost_ doesn't register Arthur from the corner of his eye.

"Hey there, David Copperfield," Merlin greets him with a grin. He never expects Arthur to keep returning, and yet, he has been surprising Merlin time and time again.

Arthur shakes his head as he comes closer. "You're not going to let that go, are you?"

"No," Merlin sets the box of new shipments on the floor, "because that would be an incredible waste. Also," this time, he tries something new because he _really_ needs to get to the bottom of this magic thing, "how do I know for sure you're actually a magician and not some fake cheat? You're always so dodgy about it."

" _Mer_ lin, all magicians are fakes and cheats. It's all about the flair." He pauses, then looks contemplative for a fraction of a moment before bursting out with, "Oh my god. You're _actually_ curious. _Mer_ lin wants to learn _magic_!"

"I do _not._ I'm just skeptical, that's all." And he _is_ , because maybe he's still stubbornly stuck on first impressions but there is something about this guy that does not scream children's magician to him. He can't be faulted for needing to see it to believe it.

"Give me a coin," Arthur says.

Merlin pulls out a quarter and hands it to Arthur, who lifts it in front of Merlin's face before flipping it back and forth on his palm. "Two different sides," he says, "heads and tails. Just so we're clear. You see that, right?" Merlin nods, waiting. "Pick a side." Merlin does, and Arthur flips.

It's heads.

He flips again and it's heads again, then two, then three more times, and then Merlin makes a grab for it and flips the coin in his own hands now. Both sides are heads. Merlin squints at it, glares at it, and then at Arthur. Cheap, he thinks. "It's up your sleeve."

Arthur shakes out his hands but Merlin takes hold of his wrist and never mind how silly it looks, he's determined to shake out this sleeve for himself. _Stupid dress-shirt_ , he thinks, and ends up unbuttoning the cuff of the Arthur's sleeve and pushing it back with his other hand. It should not be this frustrating. "Give me your other hand."

Freya, of course, chooses that exact moment to walk by, glancing at them and muffling a giggle with a hand as she passes. Merlin can feel his face grow hot, realizing that he's still holding onto Arthur's arm. He drops it with a sudden jerk like it's on fire.

"Really, Merlin. Even if it was up my sleeve—which it is not because that would be awful and cheap, in the time you took to latch on to it, that coin could have been anywhere."

"I have _extremely_ good eyes," and Merlin narrows them as if that will prove his point. "Where is it now?"

"It's kind of endearing, you know? The way you're trying so hard to not be impressed."

"That's because I am _not_. And you cheated. Where's my quarter?"

"In your back pocket. Actually check them both."

Surely enough, he finds two of them in each pocket, one fake and one real. He skims his memory for a moment in which Arthur might have come close enough to plant them on him, but can't think of anything. "Okay, wait _—how_?"

Smug doesn't even begin to describe the grin he gets for that, and Arthur says, "Let me tell you about magic, Merlin."

*

He goes through a box of folk-rock and metal as Arthur speaks. Merlin can alphabetize these in his sleep. He's actually pretty sure he has done so on slow days in the past so this is quite the welcome distraction. _All right_ , it's kind of interesting too, listening to Arthur go on about the difference between table magic, the kind people do at parties or bars to pick up girls, and children's magic, which is the kind Arthur had taught himself over the past year or so.

"The trick," Arthur says, "is in knowing your audience and their attention span. Older kids like cards. Younger ones don't care for them. They like coins and colours and things that go up in smoke or disappear. You have to keep it visual."

"And you only perform for kids. Why?" Merlin had come across some theory in one of his psych classes about people who had outrageous hobbies due to some unfulfilled childhood need. Absently, he wonders what Arthur's had been.

"It's not a stage act, _Mer_ lin. It's just something that came about back when I met Maria. Her uncle, my friend Lance, and I had been trying to keep her distracted...from some things in her life."

"Her parents' divorce?" He looks at Arthur then, who stares at him dumbfounded. "She brought it up. Seems like the two of you have been doing a great job," and he means that because he _knows_. He's been lucky to have Gaius in his own life even though the man was far from conventionally entertaining. Still, he can't imagine how different his life would have been without the presence, the initial distraction of it, and all that it had come to mean.

"I'm glad she thinks so," Arthur clears his throat. "She's a great kid," and he switches gears back to the magic. He talks of how the thing with kids is that even though the payoff is greater, kids don't hesitate to call you out on everything. "So sometimes," he says, "you make mistakes on purpose. That way, it becomes harder for them to tell the accidents from the deliberate ones."

"Maybe," Merlin says, not trying hard enough to keep the smirk out of his voice, "that just means that you're not very good."

" _Maybe_ ," Arthur flicks his name-tag, "you should try it some time, _Mer_ lin _."_

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

She has been scouring the craft stores all morning for the thick wooden beads she'd seen in the flyers. The previous night, her fingers had found thread and wire and were on their way working at a new bracelet for Morgana before her mind had been aware of it. Since she's in the area, she figures she might as well swing by the record store and say hello to Merlin.

She manages the trek only to have Freya tell her that Merlin's stepped out for dinner with a friend. She doesn't remember him mentioning anyone; then again, it isn't as if they're all that attuned to each other's daily lives anymore. Freya says something about the fellow coming by quite often, adding with a wink, "And he's quite dashing to boot." Before heading off to ring out a customer, she throws over her shoulder, "I'm sorry you missed him, but it's good to see you, Gwen."

Gwen mirrors the words and the sentiment and walks out in a daze. At any rate, she gathers it will probably do Merlin good to have new people in his life. Sometimes the old ones just didn't cut it anymore. It sounds bitter at face value but she genuinely doesn't think of it that way. It's just a truth, and one she has seen play out before her.

She thinks of the years they've shared, the way she'd pretended to be his girlfriend through high school, been his first kiss. For her, it had all been real, and the fact that she had known full well that it would never be entirely real to him never made it mean any less.

When he'd come out, it had been to her first. He'd said, absolutely straight-faced, "I'm so, so sorry Gwen," and, "I never meant to string you along," and, "can we please still be friends even if I don't want to sleep with you? I still love you to death."

She had laughed and laughed with tears in her eyes and said, "I know. I've always known," and, "don't ever be sorry for anything," and, "I love you back to death."

And on the night of Merlin's college graduation, a slightly inebriated Gaius had let the news slip that Merlin and Arthur had signed a lease near Nassau Boulevard. Morgana had taken everyone out for a celebratory dinner, called it an unofficial engagement party, and laughed with the kind of mirth that Gwen had rarely seen on her face since.

In the spirit of things, Gwen had made a toast. She'd thought, _here is someone who will take care of you for me,_ and she had said, "Here's to all of us and what's to come."

And in that moment, she had felt feather-light.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2001|►arthur|forgotten|**

Arthur hadn't understood at first why everyone cooed at Merlin and wanted to be his best friend. Maybe it was because _their_ first meeting had been rushed and absentminded that he never took all the adoration in Morgana and Gwen's voices seriously when they brought him up.

All of that came later, something to do with a smile, which grew into laughter, and the crinkling corners of the eyes that came with it.

In the winter of '98, Morgana had dragged Arthur to a music festival. There was a group of low-key artists doing a series of concerts in venues across Long Island, and she'd called him up and said, "It's not as if you have a life anyway so you might as well come along."

Once there, he'd found Gwen and this Merlin character also in attendance. Gwen, he could understand. She and Morgana had been joint at the hip ever since Morgana had gone off to college, but this guy? Arthur supposed he would just have to play it by ear. For all his easy conversation and making light of situations, he had never been all that great with new people.

Arthur can't remember now which venue it was or even who was on stage that night but he remembers bright lights and ear-splitting riffs and how he'd meant to turn to Morgana and scream in her ear, ' _This? Seriously?'_ He was convinced that might have been the only way he would have ever been heard. Instead, he'd turned to the wrong side and maybe stopped for a second or so because there was light and colour _everywhere_ and, for a fleeting moment, Merlin had turned to look at him. It had been nothing more than a slight upward quirk of lips, something catching lightning-quick like a shimmer in his eye, and Arthur thinks that maybe that had been the when and where of it, the slow swell of when it had really started. For all of Arthur's disorientation in that place, surrounded by people and sounds and an atmosphere he knew nothing of and wanted to do very little with, Arthur had smiled back.

Now, Merlin's asleep on his shoulder, a half-hour after they've collapsed in front of mindless late-night television. It's the first break they've allowed themselves after a day and a half of unpacking and assembling the new furniture.

Arthur puts the infomercial on mute and, without quite meaning to, looks around the living room, at their space, and all the ways they are filling it with their idiosyncrasies. It's all _them_ and all _theirs_ and it's in the collision of worlds that throw together a black leather couch and blue and orange throw pillows, dark oak tables and paper lanterns. Perhaps, he would have found it kitschy once but he can't even tell any longer.

He thinks of how it is that he had always been black and white and crisp lines and cuts of fitted shirts and Merlin had been colour and frayed hems of cotton and denim and mismatched jewelry with more sentimental value than anyone's heart could possibly hold. And yet, somehow, it had fit. They had fit, to the point where he could barely draw the lines now.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

In his head, he has stopped questioning Arthur's recurring presence in the store some time ago. Even when he feels that maybe he should, he stops before he can start. The thing is, whatever it is that they have going on here feels more than a little perfect in its own fragile way and Merlin doesn't want to rattle it.

The next time Arthur comes in happens to be another Thursday and at a time when Merlin is about to step out for his dinner break. Arthur claims to have just gotten off work and that he's _starving_ , and so, together, they walk around the block to the express Thai place that Merlin and Freya are regulars at.

It's right when they sit down with Merlin's spicy tofu and Arthur's hot-and-sour soup with vermicelli that Arthur's phone rings, loud and shrill and disappointingly devoid of an embarrassing ring-tone. Unremarkably, he answers a work call with his name, his _full name_ , but it becomes less unremarkable when Merlin fully registers what Arthur's full name really is and hopes against hope that the realization doesn't show on his face.

They've known each other maybe a little over a month now but it is when Arthur flips his phone shut that Merlin considers precisely how neat and tidy their association is. They pick and choose what they want the other to know about their lives, bypassing anything inconvenient or irrelevant, because where else will they see one another outside a record store? Of course, changing this, turning it into something tangible with possibly a little more consequence, means compromising the ease of this. Merlin is not entirely sure how to go about it or if he even wants to but he worries that if Arthur keeps looking at him like that, he might one day be tempted.

"So," Merlin starts, " _Pendragon._ You're Arthur Pendragon."

Arthur juts out his chin. "Who wants to know?"

"Any relation to Uther Pendragon?"

"I'm his son," Arthur says, an edge creeping into his voice. "Why?"

That might have been what Merlin had crossed his fingers against because _, well,_ this could change everything. He laughs in spite of himself and shakes his head. "Of course you are. Just my luck too."

"Why? What have you got against my father?"

It's amusing that Arthur doesn't even get defensive, just says it like he has heard it a hundred times before. With Uther Pendragon for a father, he probably has too. This might be why Merlin feels a little less paranoid about giving an honest answer.

"Well," he starts delicately, because this is still someone's father he's talking about, "other than the fact that he is a heartless corporate giant working under the guise of modern medicine, he also fired my uncle a while back. You'll have to excuse me for not being his biggest fan."

Arthur nearly chokes on his soup at that but he manages to down a glass of water and let out a laugh, throwing Merlin off entirely in the process.

"Listen, Merlin. Normally, I'd punch you in the face for talking about my father like that but you should know that he is a gravely misunderstood man." Merlin's fairly certain that the look on his face succeeds in giving away that he's not buying it because Arthur sighs and adds, "I'm sorry about your uncle. My father...he has good intentions. There's a long convoluted story behind it that perhaps you'll hear one day, but you should know that he means well. And that I don't agree with his methods either."

"Glad we're on the same page then," and Merlin takes the next few minutes to pick at his tofu in silence.

He recounts what little he knows of Arthur. The man is a full-time accountant and a part-time magician with a penchant for ancient vinyl or whatever it is that he frequents Lake Records for. He finds it perplexing that this should be Uther's son. Merlin maybe wants to resent him for it because it feels a little bit like deception even if it is ultimately no one's fault. He has to remind himself that Gaius was once Uther's right hand man and was just as passionate about the work he did for the company. Merlin had never liked it but it didn't stop Gaius from being his uncle.

He looks up from his food to find Arthur watching him.

"Come on now, what is it?"

"You're not about to inherit his throne, are you?" Merlin doesn't know why but he really, really needs to know (and he really, really hopes not). There's something about Arthur that speaks of so much more and Merlin's pretty sure a part of him would be crushed if he were wrong about that.

"Me? Run that place?" And there's some small comfort in Arthur's explosive laughter at the thought of it. His voice is still rich with it when he adds, "Besides, I think my sister's got that covered, which I am more than okay with."

And the idea that this man could be anything like his father suddenly seems so outrageous and farfetched in Merlin's head that he can't imagine how it crossed his mind at all.

"Were you _actually_ worried, Merlin?"

"Of course not," he lies badly, but it's like a breath of fresh air, a relief he hadn't seen coming.

*

This is, more or less, how it plays out.

It doesn't take long for Arthur Pendragon to start ranking up there with the other regulars at Lake Records, or for Merlin to realize that he's always waiting for Thursdays these days.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

They don't talk a lot about family, not usually, but the one other time Merlin brings up his uncle, it is to say that the man never failed to remind him that he could be doing something better with his life.

Arthur knows the feeling. He is pretty sure that he's an embarrassment to his own father because he doesn't relish the thought of sitting in someone's house overnight while wiping their mind clean. To Merlin, he says, "He probably thinks that with a degree in psychology and literature, you could be doing better than working at a record store."

"There is nothing wrong with working at a record store. I happen to like it," Merlin says, simple and open. "I know what you're going to say, and before you ask me what it is, I'm going to tell you that it doesn't matter."

*

And slowly, he's starting to get it.

He's been coming and going and drifting between these walls often enough now that he can no longer tell if it's this place and its people that are becoming less ridiculous or if he's upping his own madness in a way that lets him meet them halfway. Either way, it's starting to make sense. Every person, every corner, _everything_ here speaks of something, and it's about more than just the music.

There's feeling in the way the walls are painted, in the records on display and the hand-written labels on everything. He thinks he's _really_ starting to lose it when even the teenagers covered in sixteen kinds of ink and metal don't irk him as much. Maybe he's finally seeing what Merlin and Freya and Nimueh see, a way of bringing together what they love, the best kept secrets that go overlooked, sharing them. All at once, it feels enormous and more than a little sacred.

*

The dreams haven't stopped. Now they are just more bizarre in some ways and not others.

He's running in one of them, chasing after a ghost. An actual ghost. It's shapeless and shadowy and climbing the stairs two at a time. Arthur's in the best shape of his life and he still can't keep up. The ghost doubles its speed, moves in what is practically a flicker of a motion, inhuman speed— _of course it's not human,_ he thinks. _It's a ghost._

He makes it to the top of the landing, looks down and there's New York City, bathed in moonlight and nothing else.

*

"Well look at you, Mr. In-Demand. _Now_ who's difficult to get a hold of?"

It's Morgana, at the door of his office, and he has absolutely no idea what she's doing here. He says as much.

"Called you, texted you, was about to knock down your door," she singsongs, like it's an age-old nursery rhyme, and he can feel the age-old Morgana-related headache coming on.

"I'm sure that wouldn't have been necessary."

"Oh you'd be surprised," and she flashes him a mysterious smile. "I know how ashamed you are of your gorgeous sister. Heaven forbid anyone at your workplace find out we're related. Anyway, Uther sent me here to play instant-messenger. Your daddy needs you to free up your Thursday evening."

"If it's something to do with awards or promotions, tell him I'm busy."

"I was told it has something to do with him being your father and missing his baby boy, but you know how everything sounds very different in Uther-tones so I could be wrong."

Arthur isn't convinced. "Why is this so urgent?"

"Thursday happens to be tomorrow. Where's your head at, Arthur P.?"

She blows him a kiss before she disappears.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

_He's the high point of your week_ , Merlin thinks.

He doesn't know if it's because work is slow these days or because everything is monotonous at home and his friends have felt like strangers. This is maybe why it's not so bad looking forward to Arthur's visits. He can't remember the last time he met someone new who held his interest and provided him with something of a separate space from the all-around fog his life has become. And if there's something else there, the way he feels almost doted on, or how he catches himself getting _invested_ in someone he hasn't even known all that long, Merlin doesn't want to go anywhere near it with a magnifying glass and a red pen. It's almost enough the way it is and he doesn't think he can run the risk of ruining it.

All things considered, Merlin's quite okay with looking forward to Arthur's visits right up until the Thursday he doesn't show up. He tells himself it's too early, and waits through the evening with his eyes on the clock. Freya even tells him to go home because the store has been empty for hours and she can hang around and close up by herself but he declines. He tells her to take off early and insists he'll close up like he is scheduled to.

Never mind the fact that Arthur hadn't even made a commitment and Merlin was just going on the assumption and the pattern of the past two months' worth of Thursdays, he's pretty sure he's making himself sick with it. Even when he turns out the storefront lights at nine-thirty, he can't get past the feeling of his day being ruined and _hating_ it. He feels like a pining high school girl, waiting on the prom-date that never showed up.

He snaps at Gaius over something stupid like the dishes once he gets home, and skims through his missed calls to find two from Will. He clears the log, feeling petty and vindictive because if they're all so cryptic with him all the time, he doesn't know why he should be expected to act any different.

*

It's nearly nine in the morning when he wakes up to a cold apartment. The completely irrational sense of being stood up still hasn't left and this is when he surrenders to the thought that he is maybe in over his head a little bit.

Gaius is asleep in his study again, head rolling off to the side of the armchair. Merlin digs out a blanket and drapes it over him. He's got the thermostat and coffee on his mind as he walks to the kitchen, and it's barely a sideways glance but the colour catches his eye. When he turns all the way around, it's to find tiny droplets of blood trailing after him on the tile.

The pain hits then, quick and sharp, and he inspects his foot to find bits of glass stuck to it. Backtracking his steps, he comes across the leftovers of a shattered bulb right below where the hallway light used be.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

This is the one that keeps him up at night.

He's lying on some sort of bed. It's smaller than his bed at home and he can't recognize the room. The lighting is dim and the walls are plastered with hundreds of photographs from floor to ceiling. In a flash, everything around him loses colour, fading to white, and a wisp of a voice is all he has left. It's mumbled, distorted, like a mangled cassette tape. He thinks it says: _It's like I don't even know you anymore._

And he's being sat down in an office with a firm hand on his right shoulder. Someone hands him a document, written entirely in fine print, and there's an 'X' at the bottom. Morgana emerges from a corner and looks immeasurably sad as she says, _Arthur, please_. He tries to hold the pen, wills himself to write his name because he would do it in a heartbeat if it meant taking that look off her face. Where his signature should be, it reads instead, _PLEASE LET ME KEEP THIS_ , all in block letters, and Morgana leaves the room.

There is a beat of silence, and the bed emerges again. He's sharing a pillow with someone now and his dream-self runs a hand through the back of disheveled hair, short and dark. He whispers, _I'm glad you're here,_ and it is so quiet that he can hardly hear it himself.

*

He is so tired of it, this waking up in the middle of the night and the pervasive sense of loss and confusion that seems to come out of nowhere but always makes a point of accompanying it.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

Arthur shows up on a Monday evening, twenty minutes before closing. He's the last customer for the night and the only one at this hour, and Merlin busies himself with shipment logs and gives him one-word responses to everything.

Apparently, this does not go unnoticed. "Would you rather I leave or wait until after you close to talk?"

Merlin looks up. "Talk?"

"Yes. With words."

Merlin shoots him a glare and Arthur shuts right up. Minutes drag on between them in silence until Merlin finishes closing up the first register. Meanwhile, Arthur walks along the wall with the vinyl, observing each cover on the topmost row carefully when Merlin steals a glance. His mind skips back to Arthur's first visit, the way he'd left this place and been so easy to dislike. It might have been better left that way, easier, at any rate.

"Why do you keep coming here?" And hell, his voice is _not allowed_ to tremble right now.

It only gets worse when Arthur says over his shoulder, "Isn't it obvious?"

Merlin wants to say he wouldn't be asking if it was. "I _know_ you've never been a fan of the music."

Arthur makes a one-eighty then and Merlin doesn't know if he's imagining it but a look flashes across Arthur's face. It darkens his eyes. Merlin can't say how but he knows that look and its ring of resolution. Whatever it is, it's gone when Arthur turns back to the wall and the sight of the back of his head makes something inside Merlin coil up tight. "Maybe," Arthur says, "people change."

 _Helpful_ , thinks Merlin, and, _this is not how it's supposed to go_. There's buzzing in his head now, loud and distracting. It's back after so long that Merlin had almost forgotten the maddening intensity of it. "I'm closing up in ten minutes," he says over the sound, louder than he'd maybe intended to because, in the moment, he can hardly hear himself think. He tells Arthur to make himself useful and keep an eye on the front while he tidies up the back. It earns him a mock-salute.

He scrambles for his earphones and plays whatever's next on his playlist. It's something instrumental and loud and thereby perfect because he can't be bothered to care as long as it does its job. He scans the clock, starts closing up the last till and switches off the lights in the front. It makes more sense to put away the deposits for the night and lock up the drawers. He'll swing by the bank when he's here in the morning and hopefully functioning.

He thinks of telling Arthur that he's not feeling well, that maybe Arthur should go, but that could either mean questions that Merlin has no answers for or that Arthur would actually comply. It's when he's trying to figure out which would be worse that he catches sight of Arthur leaning against the frame of the backroom door. Merlin stops his music in time to hear him say, "I'm probably not supposed to be here now so I was going to ask where you wanted to go."

Merlin walks past him into the darkness of the store, towards the corner with the listening booth. He flicks on the lamp and takes a seat on the padded bench. Arthur follows and sits beside him in the small space.

It's a new release from north of the border, the one he picks out, and it's one that they haven't received officially and can't sell legally until the spring. Nimueh has always used her connections to make sure her crew always heard it all first. With this one, Merlin's confident that she's struck gold. He plugs in the store's two sets of sampling headphones and hands one to Arthur who studies them with some curiousity at first but takes them.

It's almost surprising how easily they manage to share space. Merlin relaxes so that he is no longer hypersensitive to every bit of movement at his side. It helps that Arthur looks ridiculous in giant headphones.

It's the only copy of the album they have right now so he's extremely careful with taking it out of its case and sliding it into the disc carousel. By the time he hits play on Stars' _Set Yourself of Fire_ , the noise in his head has become faint, dulled at the edges. He can feel his breathing slow as he closes his eyes against the swell of strings _._  
  
A minute and thirty seconds into it, Arthur takes his hand.

It doesn't feel life-changing or earth-shattering by any stretch. For all he knows, it could mean nothing. At the end of the day, they are just two people in an empty record store on a weeknight, listening to a song about ex-lovers and endings and beginnings.

Three minutes and thirty seconds into it, Merlin's pushing away their clunky headphones. His hands are shaking when he tugs at the collar of Arthur's shirt, and he's kissing Arthur or it's the other way around. It's hard to know for sure and even harder to care. The light in the booth flickers and then goes out, and Merlin can't be bothered. All he knows is that he's dizzy with want, so sharp and sudden that it nearly knocks the wind out of him.

 

________________________________

 

**|►morgana|**

She's talking to Gwen about web-design and how Gwen should make a website and advertise her jewelry when she sees Arthur come in through the doors of the coffee-shop. She's about to call him over and ask what brings him here at this hour because she knows Arthur and his first-train home routine and that it takes an extremely good reason for him to step out of it. When the reason follows him inside within mere moments, she nearly spits her caramel latte all over Gwen's new blazer.

Her first instinct is that it has got to be some sort of hallucination. Maybe caffeine can induce them after all, and maybe if she plays her cards right, she can get a paper or two published out of it. This is, however, very much real. Before she can even begin to process the entirety, not to mention, the near- _impossibility_ of it, she figures her best bet is for them to not see her or Gwen. More particularly, they are not allowed to see her _and_ Gwen, because she can't think of a single scenario in which that would not lead to a cataclysm of epic proportions.

Gwen has asked her thrice now what's going on and her only response is a gritted, "Whatever you do, please do _not_ turn around," because she _knows_ Gwen and knows that Gwen will _react._

So, of course, Gwen turns around, and promptly looks back at Morgana as if she has seen a ghost. " _Morgana_."

"It's okay. They're going to leave. I hope they leave. They _have_ to leave." This is more for herself than Gwen, and she's aware. She's also aware that she's maybe acting slightly hysterical.

" _Morgana_ ," Gwen hisses. "How are they _here_?" _Together,_ is what Morgana knows her friend wants to, means to, and cannot say.

Morgana is torn between keeping her eye on the pair of them and dodging the risk of accidental eye-contact that's even more likely to get her noticed. "I'm trying not to think about that bit just yet."

This is all so surreal that she doesn't know where to begin. She drains her mug of her drink and when she blinks, she finds Arthur standing over Gwen's shoulder and making the usual small talk people make when they haven't seen each other in ages and don't know where to begin. It's not quite the cataclysm she'd expected but it makes the word awkward seem like a compliment. It helps that Merlin is nowhere to be seen.

He turns to her eventually. "Morgana."

"Hello to you too." She gets up and reaches for Gwen's arm. "We were just leaving. Gwen?"

Gwen gives her a long look then. "Morgana, hold on. I'm waiting for Merlin. I want to see him. I think he's in the men's room."

" _Gwen,_ " she practically yelps, just as Arthur asks Gwen how she knows him. Gwen, of course, can't lie to save her life and so she tells him that they went to school together and that they were neighbours once. _Traitor,_ Morgana thinks, but she has to move and _fast_ because the adrenaline kicked in some time ago and if she's not careful, it will make her do something reckless very soon. "Well," she says, decisive, " _I_ have to run." Giving both Arthur and Gwen a peck high on the cheek, she grabs her coat and makes her way out of what could _easily_ have become her personal purgatory.

*

Although she and Arthur had always made a habit of digging their noses in each other's business, they had drawn the line at romantic relationships. It was a safe policy of _don't want to talk about it, don't want to hear about it_. Of course, it took Arthur longer to curb his pesky big-brother reflexes and go along with said policy but all in all, it did them good.

Morgana weighs the pros and cons of breaking it now and gives up on the weighing when she sees Arthur's name on her call display. She thinks it's better that this happens over the phone. She's more likely to catch herself that way in case she slips up.

"So," she says, conversational, once the pleasantries are done with, "I hear you've been seeing someone."

And because Arthur would make the connection even if none existed, she can picture him shaking his head when he says, "Gwen. She told you."

It's probably better to let him think that. "Yes, well, they're friends, and I'm told he's a pretty great guy."

"Good to see you've gathered your intel already. Yes, he is. Can we please move on now?"

"Touchy," she says with a laugh. She wants to ask more, wants to know more. _Where did you meet? How long has it been? Where did I screw up?_ Instead it comes out, "Just don't screw it up."

" _I'm_ getting the talk? From _you_? Shouldn't you be out there threatening _him_?"

 _Been there_ , she thinks. _Done that._

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2003-2004|►|**

She doesn't know how she knows she'd find him here but now that she has, she doesn't quite care. They used to come to this playground behind the nearest elementary school when they were younger, when Morgana had first started living with the Pendragons.

She'd always felt too old for the swings and the slides but sometimes, in the early evenings, she would sit and watch little kids with their parents while Arthur would wait until it got darker and emptier before making an idiot of himself on the monkey bars. It was the only time and place she'd seen him act like a kid, half his age rather than the double of it. Looking at him now, she can't think about it for too long for fear of not being able to keep it together.

"You're going to get mugged," she says to him, meaning to be stern but it just comes off as weary.

"Nothing for them to mug." His speech is borderline slurred and if she hadn't caught that, the smell of alcohol would have given him away.

She should get him up and take him home but she finds herself taking a seat beside him instead.

"I'm sorry," he says, surprisingly clear. She's about to ask, whatever the hell for, but he beats her to it. "It was my job to protect you, be there for you, and I screwed that up."

Morgana wants to scoff and ask what he's on about. He's been a better big brother than he's had any right to be. When she'd had her rough patch, it had had nothing to do with him. It was because she'd woken up one morning and both her parents were dead and then she'd been thrown into a new life with people who were more or less strangers. All things considered, Arthur had dealt with it with her quite well.

"That wasn't your fault," she tells him, because it's important that he knows. "I wouldn't let you."

"Then why should I?" And he says it so easily that it almost sounds like a valid excuse.

"Because," she says, and something catches in the back of her throat and prickles against her eyelids, "I was wrong, and even though I didn't grant you permission to help me, you were never all that good at listening." Her voice dies down in a whisper because any louder and it will break and that is just not allowed to happen, especially not here and not now.

Arthur's head lolls and ends up on her shoulder and she can feel the gentle rise and fall of him breathing. Even as she thanks every higher power that comes to mind for the solid weight of him here, there is no polite way to put it, that her brother is a wreck. His hair is matted with sweat and he stinks of alcohol and gasoline and himself but she presses a kiss to his forehead without thinking and helps him to his feet. "Give me your keys. You are going home and you will wash and eat and not fall asleep on a park bench. Your father does not earn a monstrous amount of money so his son can look and act homeless."

"I hate that place, Morgana. Every damn thing reminds me of—"

"I know," she says, "I know." She won't do him the disservice of even pretending to misunderstand. "Then you're coming with me but the same rules apply."

"Washing, eating, sleeping," he mumbles, "got it."

*

And so it begins, his life on her couch, but because Arthur Pendragon is nothing if not endowed with often pigheaded amounts of pride and tenacity, it doesn't last for very long at all. All she gives him is a push, because that's all the erasure really is. At first, he is adamantly against it, but they talk about it, for days and days. As they dissect it from every angle that makes him uncomfortable, Morgana can feel his resolve slip. In time, she can feel the arguments lacking any of their initial weight until, one day, he tells her that he's in.

After, it's like he's brand new.

He finds a better job at a better accounting firm, and she takes him shopping for nicer suits which he makes faces at but eventually complies when she tells him, "Who else is going to give you such excellent fashion advice?"

She helps him find his own place nearby and that's the one thing—other than his newly discovered taste in impeccable clothing—that she'll take full credit for. It's smaller but much nicer than the one he left behind, much as everything she's seen in Brookville tends to be. It's painted and furnished in blacks and whites and all deep, solid colours, bold to the eyes, like his new wardrobe, like his new life.

When he leaves, she misses his near-constant presence in her home and in her life. That said, she would easily have given up much more than that if it meant watching him pick himself up the way he inevitably does. If Arthur falls grandly, he also rises with just as much grandeur if not more. Perhaps, it sounds silly, but she knows what they mean now, about that mix of love and pride and being so full with it that your heart could burst.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

It's amidst an argument he's having with Gaius, something along the lines of his desire to stop being treated like he's half his age, that a loud crash interrupts him and Merlin turns around to face the hallway light. At any rate, it _used_ to be the hallway light. Now it's just bits of glass scattered on the parquet floor.

"What _is_ it with that light?" Merlin groans, and turns to Gaius who has a death-grip on his teacup. Maybe he's just afraid of it shattering as well, but that doesn't explain why all the blood has suddenly drained out of his uncle's face. "Earth to Gaius," Merlin snaps his fingers and Gaius nearly spills half his Earl Grey on his lap.

"Merlin," he says, voice an odd mix of curiousity and concern, and it makes Merlin squirm because he can't think of what might warrant either. "Has that happened before?"

"Um, yeah, I woke up and found the bulb broken on the floor a few weeks ago. Why? I think that fuse has something going on with it. I'll call maintenance tomorrow." Gaius narrows his eyes but Merlin thinks nothing of it.

"Right," Gaius switches on the lamp in the living room and then approaches the arm of the sofa that Merlin's perched upon. He squints and turns Merlin's face left and right, flicks out his penlight to examine Merlin's eyes, and after feeling his forehead for a temperature, asks if Merlin's been feeling anything out of the ordinary. Why he couldn't have asked straight out instead of dishing out the I'm-your-family-physician-as-well-as-your-family routine first, Merlin does not know.

"My pupils are fine." He bats Gaius' hands away. "See? I'm not doing drugs."

"That is the least of my concerns, and you are not answering my question."

"Everything is _fine_ , Gaius. Better than fine even, and no, there's nothing I can think of."

"Better how?" The Eyebrow darts up even higher, and when Merlin throws him his best oblivious look, fully aware of what he just let slip and how Gaius is not one to let these things go, Gaius repeats, "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad, but I would like to know in what way."

He doesn't get how Gaius is such a bloody _parent_ sometimes (and makes Merlin feel like a teenager nearly _all_ the time) but he figures he might as well tell him now.They've only _just_ started seeing each other but the realization that he likes Arthur more than enough to want to keep him around is probably what makes him spill it. "I _may_ have met someone."

"Ah, that's wonderful," Gaius returns to his tea and readjusts his posture in a way that indicates that this will be a long conversation. Merlin has other plans. "When do I get to meet this someone?"

This time, Merlin does groan out loud. " _Too early_ , Gaius."

"I do know how you young people are these days, but if it starts getting serious, I would very much like to meet this…"

"Arthur," Merlin supplies, vaguely suspecting he will regret it later. "His name is Arthur, and I'll keep that in mind," and he's looking out at the darkening sky as he says it so he does not see any signs of the second crash coming before it does.

This time it is the teacup that used to be in Gaius's hand and Merlin practically _jumps_ at the sound. Before Merlin can say another word or convince himself that this place isn't haunted, Gaius clamours towards the cleaning supply closet, muttering away about his old bones and slippery china cups. Merlin joins him in cleaning up and decides that perhaps it would be wiser not to ask.

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

Some people have more room in their hearts than others and there are different reasons for this.

It's not that Morgana has little room. Gwen just thinks that Morgana likes to tell herself she does. It makes it easier to put up an eviction notice that way. Gwen wants to fault her for it but she can't.

She's thinking this when Morgana shows up at her doorstep, pink from the cold and with snow stuck to her coat and her hair. Gwen lets her inside before she can even ask.

"At first I thought you were trying to show me up back at the coffee-shop, but then I remembered that you were you and you wouldn't do that."

Gwen takes her coat away and puts it away for her with a secret smile. "I know you thought it would be an unmitigated disaster, but it might have been nice if you'd stayed."

Morgana shoots her a _look_ that says _you don't really believe that_. Maybe not, thinks Gwen, but she's allowed to pretend.

"So how did it go?" Morgana asks at last.

And Gwen tells her truth, which is, as well as it could have, and that it was interestingly more awkward talking to Merlin than it was to Arthur because she and Merlin had been failing at this entire friendship thing for some time now.

And there is more to it, just as there always is, but she and Morgana don't talk about that. If Gwen knows Morgana as well as she thinks she does, she knows that Morgana has been determined to avoid asking herself all the questions she knows she will probably need to at some point. It's either that or rushing headlong into an over-analysis of how two people who had fallen in love and then forgotten each other ended up finding each other again.

Morgana's lost in thought for a moment and something in her features softens. "You know why I had to leave, don't you?"

Gwen nods, "Of course."

*

Gwen is confident that she can easily make a documentary, title it, _Morgana: Through the Ages_ , and have it be pretty darn accurate. She has seen the way Morgana has morphed from that closed-off girl she'd been at first, encased in an imaginary shield of indifference, to this brilliant young woman, smart-mouthed and no longer able to keep her warmth stifled inside.

She'd liked her from the start and Merlin had said something about how they balanced each other out.

Morgana had always claimed to have spent most of her life looking out for number one. She had said that if she didn't do it, who would? And Gwen had always made a point to counter with, _we will_. Once, Gwen had even managed to pry a smile out of her with that, and Morgana had said, "That's very sweet of you. Arthur says it too, in not so many words of course, but he means it all the same." She had then gone on to argue that it was still impractical to hope for that. "We are all so busy taking care of ourselves that I can't imagine how we can volunteer so easily to take care of another person and do a decent job of it too."

 _It's never done easily_ , Gwen had thought then.

And now, she thinks, _but you knew that all along._

*

The first and maybe only time Morgana had talked about it was when they were nineteen. Gwen had a sociology exam the next day but she would've been kidding herself if she'd thought for a moment that she could ignore the state of her roommate. Morgana had just hung up the phone on Uther over an argument Gwen had barely caught one side of. She'd caught enough to know that it was an argument about someone else and judging by how upset Morgana had been, Gwen had a guess.

Gwen had made them tea and Morgana had taken a moment to collect herself and then calmly offered the story of her life in return.

Her mother had died when she had been too young to remember, and then her father, when she was fourteen. She'd had a distant aunt who had been the only relative her parents had stayed in touch with, and she'd told Morgana that Uther—a friend of her father's whom she had barely known—was to take care of her now. Uther, her aunt had said, had money and people to cook and clean at his place, and he was was willing to take on the responsibility of another child.

"By responsibility, she'd meant liability, of course," Morgana had said. "And then I'd thought of that boy, Arthur. You know, I couldn't stand him when I was younger. He was a brat and a half and wouldn't let me play with anything at his house, but then I'd moved in and he was different. I guess we bonded over dead mothers or something.

"And it was strange in the beginning, having Arthur be a big brother, though he slowly became freakishly good at it. He wouldn't let me get into cars with boys and used to check my coat pockets for cigarettes for as long as he could without me catching him at it. He was still a kid himself, you know? Just a year older than me, but I figured it gave him something to do. He was so crap at conversation but you could tell he tried, and he cared, and from that horrid house, I loved him best, possibly more than anyone in the world at that time because no one I'd loved from before was alive.

"The funniest thing was that I couldn't stand Uther for the longest time. He was perfectly kind to me but he was such a shit parent to his son. The saddest thing of all was that Arthur would never even notice because he was so used to it. The man didn't show a drop of affection and all he cared for were grades and sports and making sure his boy was the best at everything never mind the toll it took on him. And I would think, _wow_ , if I had a kid, I wouldn't care if he flunked out of school as long as he was loved. And I don't know, Gwen, someone had to take care of him too. He'd tried for me until he really couldn't because I wasn't easy to take care of and I know somewhere along the way we became distant. Still, he was my family, is _still_ my family, and we knew that we would try to take care of each other even if we didn't always know how to go about it."

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

He dreams of snow and slippery ice beneath him. Someone reaches for his hand and lifts him to his feet and it's then that he remembers having fallen some time ago.

In another dream, he's standing in a room lit by candlelight and Merlin whispers something that makes his eyes turn gold. Arthur opens his mouth to speak, to ask, but Merlin pulls him closer, kisses him, weaves fingers in his hair, under his shirt, and works his lips across the skin and bones of his jaw. Arthur can hardly think to move. His eyes are closed and he's sensing, feeling, and not thinking at all when the room grows infinitely hotter—as it ought to, he figures—and then he feels the burn.

There are flames lapping at his fingertips and licking at his lips. When he blinks, he is by himself in the dark, and in his mouth, there is the taste of ash.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|1999|►merlin|forgotten|**

They're in Merlin's dorm room the first time it happens.

More specifically, they're on Merlin's bed, and there isn't much else to it, not with Arthur's mouth, scorching hot, moving from his neck to his collarbone.

He's got his hand curled tight in Arthur's hair just as Arthur reaches for the waistband of Merlin's jeans when all the lights in the room start flickering, current buzzing louder and louder, until the lamp by his closet explodes.

Arthur falls off the bed, screaming a string of curses, and looks downright terrified for his life. And Merlin, who should be at least wary of it by now, comes close to toppling over from the shock of it going off completely unannounced like that.

"What the fuck?" Arthur's still saying, over and over again, and Merlin can't blame him. "Call maintenance. Hell, call _someone_. That is _not_ safe. Your wiring could have killed—"

"It's not the wiring," Merlin says, running a hand over his face. He doesn't know why he's telling Arthur this. He supposes he likes him quite a bit if he's doing it though.

Arthur shoots him a look like he's lost his mind. "What's _wrong_ with you? _Of course_ it's the wiring."

"No, Arthur. It's not. You can ask Gwen," and Merlin then proceeds to have the most awkward conversation of his life with the one person he's absolutely terrified of scaring away.

*

Arthur drills him with questions upon questions, and they seem to be more out of skepticism than interest until it reaches the point where it becomes the other way around. Merlin shrugs and hates that he has less than half the answers. The questions Arthur asks are good ones and very much like the ones he's asked himself all his life. He can only tell Arthur what he knows, which is mostly that he has been this way for as long as he can remember. Once Merlin gets going though, he's surprised by how difficult it is to stop. It doesn't help that all the while he's speaking, Arthur is sitting there, just _listening,_ and so intently too.

He tells Arthur about being sent by his mother to live with his uncle, who had tried to apply every trick in his book to help Merlin manage it. It had worked well enough to let him function more or less normally, so long as Merlin generally kept himself within a certain emotional range.

"But you're always so ridiculously chipper," Arthur interrupts, "and you are like the furthest thing from any sort of emotionless robot."

"I'm better now," Merlin says with a shrug. He's doubts there's any point in putting his entire childhood under the spotlight. "Long story short, I've never been able to shut it up and get rid of it for good. And every now and then, it crops up, as if to say, _Hello, Merlin. I'm still around and still winning this_."

Arthur's playing it cool, or as cool as he can under the circumstances, and Merlin can't help but find it a little admirable even as he sees right through it. The tense line of Arthur's spine when he bends to pick up his shirt from the floor gives him away. He's been remarkably quiet through most of Merlin's talking but he speaks now from the far edge of the bed. "So if you're not crazy, which I'm not completely convinced that you aren't, why would you hide something like that?"

 _Because you're picking up your stuff and leaving_ , Merlin wants to say. He wants to explain everything he couldn't afford to before, the way he was so terrified of first kisses, afraid of _everything_ since they'd first started seeing each other some months ago because he couldn't risk himself blowing a fuse, _literally_. And even that wouldn't have been the worst thing. There was always so much more at stake for him, so much more to lose.

"You always said I was so quiet, so careful. This is what happens when I'm not."

" _Mer_ lin—" Evidently, Arthur is annoyed, but he was the one to ask and now Merlin is gong to make him sit and hear it out.

"I was afraid I'd slip up somehow and give myself away, and then you'd be scared or weirded out or both." _And then you'd leave_ , he thinks, _and I couldn't take that chance_.

"Merlin." It's quieter now, the way he says it, and Merlin looks up.

"Go for it. I probably deserve it anyway."

Arthur slumps back down on the bed and glares at the ceiling until he finally shakes off whatever it is that's on his mind. "Come here." He tugs at Merlin's arm and arranges them both so that they take up all of the smaller than small residence-issued mattress, facing one another. His hand moves absently along the side of Merlin's face, fingers wandering until they catch in hair still mussed from earlier. Even as the touch is unexpectedly gentle, when Arthur speaks, his voice is stern. "You can _not_ just throw something like that at me and expect me to go on about my day."

Unthinking, Merlin leans into the touch. "Trust me, I don't expect—if you want to leave me to contemplate my sheer stupidity, for a while or possibly forever, I will understand." As much as it pains him to say it, he _will_ understand, because Merlinknows that there is no reason anyone in their right mind should or would put up with this. "I may even live," he adds, a wry afterthought, and he will. He just won't be all that happy about it.

"See, I'm not so sure about that last bit," Arthur says, "so maybe I will stick around." And there is the smile that Merlin knows so well, the one that follows when Arthur either cannot believe what he's doing or wishes he could stop. It's completely involuntary, unreservedly warm, and heart-stoppingly wonderful to behold. Having been at the root of it countless times, Merlin takes pride upon practically inventing it upon Arthur's face. Perhaps, the thought of this is what convinces him that Arthur's telling the truth.

"So I haven't managed to weird you out?" Merlin's voice sounds sickeningly hopeful even to his own ears but it feels like a small price to pay for everything Arthur has just overlooked.

"Of course you have. You are totally weird and I will probably be terrified at the thought of even getting to second base with you for a very long time—oh, _stop sulking!_ The point is that I'll get over it. We'll turn out the lights and find candles or _something_ you can't screw up. We'll make it work."

When Merlin grins, grateful, Arthur mirrors it. Arthur repeats it, softer this time, until it sounds like a promise— _we will_ —until Merlin lets the words take up all the space in his head.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►morgana|**

Morgana is aware that all patient records are sealed once the erasure occurs and that even senior staff members have limited access to pre-erasure documentation. She is lucky in that she has always been higher up on the proverbial food chain, an edge that admittedly has a lot to with the fact that the company head is her guardian and trusts her to one day handle the future of this place. Even then, however, she is not an exception when it comes to client confidentiality. Uther takes it very seriously, perhaps because he knows just how much is at stake.

Morgana is an exception in that she frequents Uther's office so often and always makes a point to ask about the secretary's kids that the woman has no qualms about letting Morgana in one afternoon when she claims to have left a file in there. It's one of those slow, lazy days at the company, where half the staff has taken off early due to lack of appointments and Uther is in a business meeting at the other end of the city.

She figures that it's not really breaking the law if it's her brother at the other end of her med-record stalking. And if she's being perfectly honest with herself, it's curiousity that drives her. She needs to know what went wrong because this is an anomaly if she ever saw one. Sure, the company has had its share of lawsuits from people claiming that exposure to conflicting information had triggered the memory of the person or pet or event they'd had erased. The lawyers always took care of that though, and the company was always clear about what it termed The Dissonance Problem. Camelot Neuroservices would not take responsibility for any psychological damage caused by a third party. If Gwen had told Arthur that he had gotten Merlin erased and Arthur had chosen to believe her, Camelot Neuroservices could not and would not be held liable.

Morgana believes without a doubt that Arthur's erasure had been clean. His records were thorough and detailed, and she ought to know because she had sat through and stood through every step of every assessment and dictation and even taken on the tedious electronic data entry that she usually left to the analysts. She had taken his history and recorded his audiotape and made him sign the consent forms. And then, on the night of the erasure, she had watched dots flicker on the map of his brain until they disappeared, checked monitors and adjusted stimulation voltages while the technicians worked away at the rest, and she'd been _thorough_. This one was to be spotlessand Morgana had sworn by it.

She goes through the names on the screen and finds nothing there. She then checks the flagged files next, the ones marked with the highest degree of confidentiality because that's ultimately the kind of access this computer is good for. Uther had told her that these files belonged to the big shots, the celebrities, politicians, and all the high-stakes people who couldn't afford to let the world know they'd gone through with an erasure. At least Uther had ranked his son up there, Morgana thinks wryly. After browsing through fifteen entries in vain, she remembers the deal with the flagged files. At the surface, they are always devoid of identifying information, and instead, arranged by a code. _What is targeted to be erased_ , Uther had once said, _will not be remembered anyway_.

She arranges the files alphabetically and scans everything under the letter _M_. There is _nothing_ with Merlin's name on it, and that's when she remembers to check under _E_ instead. This is where she finds what she came for. The file is titled EMRYSMR6302, and she prints out all the summaries. She clicks on another with a familiar codename and finds it mostly blank and incomplete.

She should have expected this. It's all they have left of Merlin's attempted erasure. She remembers it as the only time she'd had to physically leave in the middle of a session because it was impossible to sit through after he had woken up in the middle of it, pulled off the electrodes, and nearly set the room on fire.

No, she is not going to relive that nightmare. Instead, she thinks to scroll back up to something that had caught her eye earlier. She thinks it was under _M_.

She doesn't need to open it. The name is enough.

All at once, she feels lightheaded and she's sure that the floor is going to come up and meet her any second. She hits print in the time she thinks she has and shuts down the computer.

On the upper right hand corner of every printed page, it reads: MORDRED5191.

This is her file.

*

She had been out of college a year, pulling long hours interning at Uther's company, and desperately in need of a night out. She was never the one night stand type of girl but she had learned that night that there was an exception to every rule.

She'd met him at a bar, a friend of a friend of Gwen's, and one thing had led to another. Although Gwen had been a little horrified at the thought, Morgana hadn't bothered with it much after. He had seemed nice, attractive with pale blue eyes, and a hint of an accent she couldn't properly place.

They had been safe, she could have sworn. She had been sober enough to remember even though none of that had mattered when it happened because it happened anyway.

She kept telling herself that it had to count for something that she didn't freak out when she had found out she was a month pregnant. It wasn't until then that she had even thought of it, the possibility of being a mother, of having a child. And it came with a spark of something she would never have seen coming a million miles away before she was put in the position. It made her think that maybe this could work and maybe she could go through with it. She had never had much of a template in her own life to go by but she wondered if that made her want it even more. The spark soon grew, greater and greater within her, until it became a full-blown fire of wanting and _needing_ to go through with it.

After Gwen, Arthur was the second person she had told. She knew there would never be a good time and, predictably, he had been more than ready to find the father and murder him. Somehow, she had managed to sit him down and tell him to stop. She'd said, "I'm keeping it. I want to."

And he'd shot back with, "You can't be serious. You've got your—"

"Whole life ahead of me, I know." She'd tried to coax him into looking at her then, into trusting that she hadn't lost her mind. "I'm not a child, not anymore, and I want this."

"How do you know?" The look on his face then and all its wild concern had made her wish she could have shown it to him, the way life had swirled inside her, all of her.

"I don't know, Arthur. I just know that I do. It feels right, like it was meant to happen."

"This," he'd said gravely, "is _not_ the Morgana I know."

She'd thought about chances, the mere possibility and the narrowest of margins for a life to be conceived inside her of all people. There was no way that it wouldn't have changed her.

She'd walked up to him and brought her face close to the side of his. "I know, and that's okay." She'd pressed her lips against his cheek before smiling against it. "I'm going to be a mother, Arthur, and you're going to be an uncle. Uther will probably freak out like no tomorrow, at first, but it will be okay. It _will_."

*

They had found out it was going to be a boy a few weeks before she'd lost him. She had been twenty-two weeks along.

When she'd decided to name him, she had told Arthur and no one else. He had held her tightly and said that he was glad to have been wrong.

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

When Morgana says the name, _his_ name, Gwen doesn't know what's happening anymore. Part of her should be relieved, she knows, because that's one less person she has to lie to. Instead, she stands, fists clenched tight, and something wells up in her throat. " _Morgana_..." and has no idea where to go from there.

"It's fine," Morgana says. "I've had days to cry about it. And no, Arthur doesn't know I know. He has no reason to."

Gwen wants to say, _you can't protect him forever_ , but Morgana's talking again, all flippancy and self-deprecation and dark-humour. Gwen doesn't know whether to find this admirable or to worry because a large part of her is convinced that Morgana's still in something resembling shock.

"How you managed to not go mad and kill all of us in our sleep is beyond me. How _did_ you keep yourself sane? And a better question is _why_."

"Do you really need to ask?" Gwen's voice comes out a whisper and she doesn't know what any of it is supposed to mean. She loves, has loved, will love them all and she could not and cannot ever bear to lose any of them. And maybe, she thinks, it's because she had assumed that they needed her as well, even if only a little bit. Maybe they needed someone who knew them, the whole of them, and all that had happened, everything that had been erased, and what it was all supposed to mean. "It's quite selfish if you think about it."

"Selfish," Morgana laughs, a hard, bitter sound that Gwen can feel grate against her skin. "Sometimes I wish you were, for your own sake."

And all Gwen can do is offer her a smile, more brittle than she means it to be. "I used to think so too."

*

Gwen still doesn't think she understands all of it. She doesn't think she ever will. Maybe it has become too much to take in. There's too much substance, too much heart, too much pain and love and memory.

Someone has to remember it all, she'd thought, even when the weight of it had driven her to near-madness. Deep inside, she had always felt that it took more courage to remember than to forget but it was hard to remember that when you were the only one with the memories. They were always near-brimming over the top, threatening to spill at any given moment.

More than once, she'd thought to stand in line at Uther's clinic and join her friends in ignorance and oblivion. She'd sworn that if she'd started, she would have had them all erased, every single person she had ever known because she couldn't afford any kind of reminders. Gwen, however, knows herself well and knows that she would never have been able to follow through with it.

She couldn't picture a life in which she would ever have the desire to do or feel or be much of anything without the spark in Merlin's eyes or the edge of Morgana's smile or the light and colour of everything around her, everyone who'd shaped her, spinning, dancing, just _being_ in her life.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2003|►arthur|forgotten|**

He had taken health management for the first three years of college.

Arthur had known that he could have excelled at anything he put his mind to but, back then, his problem had been apathy. It wasn't that his options had been entirely foreclosed by his father but there had always been a very strongly suggested bias. His father had laid out the notion of keeping the company in the family, always said that Morgana could take care of the science if Arthur could do the rest, and Arthur had thought, why the hell not.

And then, sometime during his junior year, he had met Merlin. It didn't take him long to become captivated by this strange, strange boy even as he could have sworn it went against every bone of better judgment in his body.

Here was someone who could barely carry a conversation when Arthur had first met him, someone who'd been a walking electrical malfunction all his life. He'd seemed like such a quiet, self-conscious thing, and then Arthur had gotten to know him. He could never have guessed that he would find in Merlin such a wide-angle lens of viewing the world, such colour and saturation, and a sense of optimism that was borderline ridiculous. It was a force to be reckoned with, and Arthur could not help but be pulled into its orbit.

The thing was that the optimism came with an equal and opposite force. Merlin was not afraid to call out the faults in things when he saw them. He was forgiving of people, but fiercely critical of institutions, of larger systems and their agendas. At first, Arthur had taken it as a silly quirk as well, rolled his eyes and smiled, thinking, _there's Merlin on another one of his tirades_ , and then he'd gotten pulled into that too.

Merlin didn't bother to hide his dislike for the work Uther Pendragon did and when Arthur realized it went beyond just jokes and snide remarks, there was no way for it to not be a sensitive subject. The thing was that Merlin made convincing and passionate arguments and he was always so unrepentant about where he stood that even when Arthur was frustrated, downright maddened, he was charmed. It was something so new for Arthur who had been dragged along by some immeasurablecurrent for as far back as he could remember. It was something he had stopped questioning early on in life and Morgana had given him hell for it on more than one occasion. To have Merlin do the opposite, _always_ , Arthur couldn't tell if he envied or admired it more.

Ultimately, when you had someone like Arthur and someone like Merlin, it was almost impossible for someone like Arthur to not be swayed just a little.

In his fourth year, Arthur had switched out of the management program into accounting and finance, and he'd thought it a surefire way to dodge the bullet of Camelot Neuroservices because Uther certainly had bigger dreams for his son than to keep him as his company's accountant. Looking back, Arthur knows that Merlin and his talk of microfinance and working with grassroots and charities, and all his excited whispers of, _the difference you could make, Arthur,_ had certainly played a part in it, but it hadn't been the driving force.

Just this once, Arthur had thought, he'd needed to do something decisive and consequential.

He'd needed to do something for himself.

*

He thinks he has always known the dangers of building a world around a select number of people, even if subconsciously, always felt the warning signs blink in the back of his head long before he'd found himself doing just that. Now, he can neither watch nor look away as one such pillar crumbles before his eyes, as the ground splits, dropping beneath him faster than he can find a ledge to hold on to.

He remembers when she had first come to live with them, looking as if she'd awoken from a nightmare and only to find that it hadn't just been a bad dream. And he remembers her, a decade later—just a month ago, lying on the kitchen floor with empty bottles and colourful pills, then a hospital bed, then the high-risk ward, face haunted and eyes fixed for hours on a point outside the window—until he has to blink against it and _stop_ remembering.

In the state of losing whatever Morgana had left of her mind, she had left Arthur with no other option than the one he had once sworn to never go near. When it came down to choosing between Morgana having a shot at getting her life back or letting her take more chances with her bulletproof sense of self-loathing and yet another overworked psychiatric nurse in New York, it hadn't been much of a decision at all. It was also maybe the first time he had understood with an alarming degree of clarity why his father did what he did.

This is what he has on his mind one night when Merlin's voice breaks the silence from behind him.

"You can talk about it, you know? I know it's eating at you inside."

"Just go to sleep, Merlin." He sees no use in troubling Merlin over something he can't fix.

He can feel Merlin reach for him then, a soft rustle of the sheets until there's a warm hand on his shoulder. Arthur shrugs it off, barely conscious that he's done it. Later, when he can sense Merlin withdrawing into himself, he wonders if it was one of those moments where being raised at a distance as the son of Uther Pendragon had kicked in like autopilot. When he turns around in their bed, he's met with the sight of Merlin's back. They've been going at this long enough for Arthur to pick up on the signs of him screwing up. This time, however, he has also apparently given Merlin a head start in putting up the barriers.

"Merlin," he says, a quiet huff of a breath, and gets nothing. "I _know_ you're not asleep."

Some other day, he would have tried harder, pushed further, but he's tired from thinking and thinking and thinking and the fatigue feels physical.

They lie through the night, back to back.

*

It doesn't take Merlin long to connect the dots. Arthur's sure that Merlin knows that, next to himself, there is only one other person that has had the power to override all the default settings in Arthur's life. And so, he asks what Arthur had hoped he wouldn't. "You're considering it, aren't you?"

If it's inevitable, Arthur thinks there's no point in hiding it. "I am. And before you lash out about giving into the plagues of corporate medicine, she is my _sister_ , and this is the _only_ way."

"Arthur, no," and Merlin looks at him, empathetic. He wears the loss and brittleness and everything Arthur can't or won't let himself feel. "Just be there for her," Merlin says. "Talk to her."

"Merlin, for once, _please,_ back off. This is not your business. It's not _your_ family."

"But she's my friend," and Merlin stresses, voice growing desperate even as Arthur could care less right now, "and _you_ are closer to me than family. I think it matters and I don't think you should give up."

"It's _not_ giving up. It's been tested and proven to work. My father has gone through thousands of clients. Whatever happens, she'll get better." She has to, he tells himself, because from here, there is no way but up. "Why would I not want that for her?"

And Merlin shakes his head and turns away, the smallest and weariest of laughs escaping him.

"What is it?"

"Is that what you're going to do if something goes wrong with us?"

And Arthur doesn't even know _how_ it's turned into that. "What kind of _stupid_ question is that?"

"That's not exactly a _No, Merlin. I will not erase you if you piss me off_."

It's coming close to shouting. Somewhere in his mind, they are already there. And he hates it just as he knows Merlin does.

"You're insane." Arthur takes a breath, a deep lungful of it. He reaches for Merlin's face, brushes a thumb over his cheek and watches his eyes flutter closed. _I wouldn't,_ he thinks. _You know I wouldn't._

*

He knows it can't mean well that Merlin doesn't speak to him for a week after Morgana's erasure.

And one day, Arthur has to sit him down and say to him, "I'm sorry, Merlin," even though he is absolutely not, not for what he has done, has _had_ to do, "but wishful thinking is not a cure for everything, not when people are met with disasters that they can't patch up like that," and he snaps his fingers. "You don't have to like it but I had to do what I did and I'm tired of feeling like I have to defend it to you or anyone."

He doesn't know how but it derails into something bitter and chaotic as he ends up going on about how he was better off when he faced the world with low expectations, even if, in some ways, it was not entirely untrue. "And then you came in and brought your goddamned sunshine and rainbows and oh, let's try this, Arthur, and your furniture is so _dull,_ Arthur, and let me hang fancy paintings and your music is so shit, Arthur. Here, Arthur, let me spice up your life with this and that and the next thing and it will all be fucking _zen._ You never _did_ get it."

"If you hated it all so much, you could have just said so," Merlin snaps, hurt clear on his face.

Arthur doesn't know how to say that he didn't and he couldn't, _not with you_ , but he feels drained and alone and it does not leave him. He thinks, here is Merlin with his electric blue bracelets and his Radiohead playing in the background—hell, here is Merlin who is fucking _electric_ for crying out loud. Their minds have not, cannot, will not work the same way. How could Arthur for an instant expect him to get it? And here is something that neither of them can fix with anything they know or anything they have, and Arthur can only wonder where that leaves them.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

"Oh my god!" Freya practically shrieks. "Are you humming _White Houses_?"

"What are you even talking about?" He is doing _no_ such thing.

"Vanessa Carlton. You're humming _Vanessa Carlton_. Oh my _god_ , I have to tell mom."

"Do it. Maybe she'll fire me and I'll find a _real_ job," he says with a laugh, because both his and Freya's threats could not be emptier.

"So what's the occasion?" And Freya does not for an instant buy Merlin's perfectly confused look. "There _has_ to be an occasion. You're going on some hot date tonight aren't you?"

A customer comes in then and saves him from answering. Freya is adorable and would coo at him forever but Merlin's never been one to mix up his work and personal life, even in a place like this where he knows that it would hardly be unwelcome or uncomfortable. He turns to the man who just walked in and says, "Yes sir, I will be more than happy to check inventory on that vinyl for you," slipping a small smile Freya's way.

And yes, _fine_. Arthur's coming over tonight and Gaius is at a conference in New Jersey and Merlin is allowed to hum Vanessa Carlton once in a while.

*

It occurs to him when he's tidying up the apartment that he still doesn't know all that much about Arthur. Sure, he knows about his father and the whack-job family business and where Arthur works and what he does in his free time. He knows that Arthur's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he was maybe four years old, that once his father had lost her, he'd become an emotionally unavailable workaholic. And Merlin knows the little things like how Arthur never grew out of hating broccoli stems or being allergic to pineapples, and how he grew up on his father's music, which seemed to have stopped somewhere at Beethoven, and maybe the odd number by Frank Sinatra. It neatly explained the whole thing with Arthur and the vinyl records and all his derision for the indie kids of today.

All right, so he knows probably more about Arthur than he's let on about himself, but he finds himself still wanting more. He knows the formula for how these thing go and maybe this is what stops him short. There is supposed to be something of a give and take, and to want more, it's only fair that he give more. It's still early for the two of them, has barely been a few weeks, and he wonders if it's even perceptible at this point. Even if it was, it's not that he's afraid exactly. He likes Arthur quite a lot, so much that it almost frightens him at times because he's not usually one to fall so hard so fast. It's more that Merlin doesn't know how to go about sharing much of himself given what little sense he's been able to make of his own life to date.

*

"So how is it," Arthur asks, "that we know the same people, your friend Gwen, my sister Morgana, and yet…?"

Merlin has been thinking about this for some time as well, especially since running into Gwen who had recognized Arthur on sight. Thing is, he doesn't have an answer for it either. He remembers something Gwen had said a while ago, when he'd first told her he was forgetting the endings of all the books. "I went to college with your sister." He doesn't know what kind of weight it holds, if any at all, only that it's the thing that comes to the forefront of his mind.

"I suppose you did. Not only was it a small college but if you went to college with Gwen, and Morgana was her roommate, then it wouldn't be such a stretch that—"

"Arthur," and it's clearer now. _...do you remember Morgana? ...the feisty, pretty one._ "I was friends with her."

"Funny." It seems to grab Arthur's interest as well. "She never mentioned you."

Merlin thinks of how Gwen hadn't mentioned Arthur either, except that now he's remembering the day they'd sat on her front porch and her blink-and-miss-it words. He had dismissed it for the longest time. It was such a common name after all, and he's still thinking about this, trying to catch what's so odd about it when Arthur's voice cuts in with alarm.

"Did you hear that?"

It sounds like a buzz followed by a hiss somewhere far away. "It's probably the hallway light," Merlin says wearily. "It has the worst wiring ever."

And he senses it then, _feels_ it rather than sees it, the spark, the jolt, a shock of bright white light like a speck of lightning before the room goes dark.

He thinks he hears Arthur gasp and realizes that in the past half-second, he has somehow managed to both push Arthur away and back himself up into a wall. Arthur reaches out for him but he is sinking to the floor, pulse racing, breathing hard, and crouching awkwardly with his arms over his head because it sounds like thunder in here, deafening and all-consuming.

" _Merlin,_ " Arthur grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him out of it. The last dregs of dusk and the city lights that dot the view from the balcony are the only sources of light in this room. Even in this, Arthur's eyes are too clear, and more than his arms, they hold Merlin in place.

It's a minute and a half later that all the lights come back on at once. Or all of them except for the chandelier over the kitchen table, which is now in pieces all over the table, the chairs and the tile.

Merlin sits on the floor, hands numb as he digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. Shapes and colours dance in his vision, take up all the room there is behind his eyelids.

*

**|►arthur|**

Arthur is pretty sure this is Merlin's way of quietly freaking out. He's walking around the apartment as if he can't remember what he set out to do. After watching him for several minutes, Arthur decides that he's probably surveying the damage.

Arthur hasn't started with his own quota of freaking out just yet. He can't explain why that is but he's not complaining either. He figures he'll probably start once Merlin calms down.

"I think you should to go," Merlin says when he catches Arthur staring.

"I think you should call someone." Arthur would do it himself if he knew who exactly the go-to person was after witnessing someone initiate a power outage with their mind. "How far is your uncle?"

"He'll be back tomorrow. I don't want to worry him."

"You just blew up a chandelier. I think he should know." For a second, Arthur recalls that it was almost as if he'd seen a speck of gold in Merlin's eyes. He disregards the thought and blames it on a trick of the very unreliable lighting in this place, never mind that he has just given Merlin full responsibility for the chandelier. It would probably have made more sense to blame the wiring first, to have it checked out, but he doesn't even bother with that. In a twisted sort of way, it works in his head. Just don't ask him to explain it because he can't.

"I'll be fine," Merlin says, sounding decided _not_ fine. "It's happened before. I think. I'm not sure. I'm okay. _Just go_."

"I really don't think that's happening," and Merlin can glower and make all the sullen faces he wants but there is no way Arthur is going to leave him like this. They're going to make sense of this. He'll get to the _how_ part of it a little later. Right now, he just needs Merlin to keep his head on straight and stop feigning composure, and very badly at that, in order to get Arthur to leave.

A glass of water and two arguments later, Arthur miraculously manages to steer Merlin towards his bed with a hand on the small of his back and sits beside him.

"Arthur, you should go."

"Here's a tip," Arthur says. "If it didn't work the last twenty-five times, it's not going to work now." It earns him a groan partly muffled by the pillow at this angle. "I called work, yours and mine. Now I'm not going anywhere and you are going to make it easy for yourself and stop wasting your breath."

Merlin looks at him, death-pale and heavy-lidded, and croaks, "I'm sorry. Tonight sucks."

"What are you talking about?" Arthur smirks. "Dinner and fireworks? Best date ever."

Merlin shoots him a glare but there's no steel in it. In turn, Arthur pushes back his hair and tells him to stop before he hurts himself.

It's when Merlin's breathing finally evens out and Arthur's sure that he's asleep that he allows himself to think about it. The shock and horror or whatever it is that he's supposed to feel simply does not come and Arthur gives up when he's sure that he couldn't force the feeling if he tried. Instead, he switches off the light and settles in beside Merlin, wrapping an arm around him like a second blanket at his back.

It's something he picked up on from the get-go, the way they fit and fell into a rhythm, from the way they walked in step to the way they kissed. It went beyond that, to a broader knowledge of how the other person moved and functioned in their space. It was wholly new and yet like clockwork in its familiarity, quick and effortless, and that in itself was startling at times.

*

He dreams they're on a moving train, red and yellow and white lights zooming by outside the window.

Montauk is the next station, the final station, someone has just announced, and Arthur tries not to wonder why they're going to a beach in the middle of the night.

Next to him, Merlin looks out the window. Out of seemingly nowhere, he says, "Sometimes you love so much that it burns you out," before taking Arthur's hand.

There's the sound of static and Morgana's voice whispering close to him from somewhere he can't see. _It burns you out and burns you up, like a candle, like a cigarette._ Merlin's mouth is still moving but Arthur can't hear his voice, only Morgana's, and soon, it becomes layered with another woman's. It might be Gwen, might be his mother. He cannot say for sure. He only knows that they are saying, whisper-soft: _It_ c _onsumes you until it destroys you_. _And when there's nothing left to burn_ —

The train comes to a sudden halt with a screech, and Merlin is gripping his hand so tight that the whites of his knuckles show through. One of his bracelets rides up on his arm and away from the rest, a thin chain with a silver charm, shaped like a lightning bolt, dangling at the side.

Arthur reaches out to touch it with his free hand, and Merlin says, "You like it? Gwen got it for me."

Something feels disproportionately wrong about that. He knows he should be worrying about the train, about whatever else is going on, but he can only think, _that's not true_ , and, _I gave it to you_.

He'd seen it at a jewelry stall in the city and, for reasons that make no sense to him now, he'd thought of how fitting it would be.

*

He wakes up disoriented, somewhere around the first few hours of the morning. Merlin sleeps surprisingly soundly so Arthur takes care in untangling himself.

The thing is, he _remembers_ that stall, the sights and sounds and the smell of food vendors and their street meat, the city and the cigarettes, in the air all around. He wonders if this is why he sat so still through the power going out and Merlin's crisis that followed. Part of him had been used to it, had seen it play out before a hundred times or so.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2003|►merlin|forgotten|**

It turns into a great deal of shouting and a series of minor electrical fires and broken appliances in the apartment. Arthur does most of the shouting, and Merlin, well, Merlin's behind the short circuits and the overloaded circuits and the sparks that seem to fizzle out of every corner these days.. He doesn't necessarily mean to, probably couldn't do it if he had meant to because that's not how it works. Still, there's a correlation between how royally _pissed off_ Merlin gets and the size and power of the appliance that will be out of working order in the very near future.

It evolves into something of sick cycle of passive aggression until it is no longer just passive. And to anyone who's there to see it, it's a dysfunctional household, often literally, because half the things that fill this place no longer serve their purpose.

It goes on until they forget who started it.

*

Arthur hardly sleeps at his own place, leaves early and works late and practically lives with Morgana, and Merlin makes a point to clock in extra hours as well to be away from home. The one day they manage to be in the same space by what they're both sure of is just an awful coincidence, the presence of the other takes up the room, every room. It drips down the walls and seeps into pores until it stifles and slowly suffocates.

The argument, before it escalates, is completely unrelated to anything. It might have been about paying a bill or taking out the trash or leaving a light on, but if there's one thing Merlin hates, it's Arthur's voice right now, especially at this volume, and if there's one thing he can't help, it's the corner of the kitchen that has the fridge-stove-microwave short circuiting. It earns him a glimpse of probably the closest thing he's seen to unadulterated _fear_ on Arthur's face. A small, rational, human part of him thinks that he should maybe hate himself a little bit for finding such pleasure in it but in that instant, it's all very, very real.

Of course, they are nothing without their pride. Sometimes, Merlin thinks it that it is what brought them to this point and it may be all they have left in common. And tonight, because Arthur has never been able to sleep at night without having the last word, he roars, "Just for once, could you _stop_ acting like _such_ a fucking freak of nature—"

And, _of course_ , thinks Merlin, of course it's below the belt because this is what they do when they get like this. They fight dirty, skim their minds and their memories for the vulnerabilities they've collected over the years and they exploit them until they know they've broken something deep inside the other person. They then lie awake at night, facing opposite ways, when the high of vengeance curbs and fades. All that's left then is the guilt and filth on their conscience with a solid portion of self-loathing thrown in for good measure.

It's a moment of clarity, maybe almost as clear and definitive as the moment he knew he was in love with this person. The person he loved is not here anymore, has soundlessly evacuated the premises while Merlin wasn't looking. Whatever he left behind, Merlin does not want anything to do with anymore. He smiles bitterly, unshakably, and thinks: _Thank you. You've done it for me_.

And Merlin feels no strain, no conflict, when he says, "Well that's what I am and there's no acting required. You knew that from the start and you know it now."

The greatest thing is feeling free. Merlin finally feels free of him, of all of this, and he's not turning back. He knows that half the hurt and the anger and mistakes in this place are his but this is how the best things end. He walks past Arthur to their bedroom, grabs his phone, laptop, mp3-player and shrugs on a coat. When he returns to the kitchen, Arthur is standing very still by the window. Merlin can't spare a glance, can hardly spare a breath because he knows if he gets distracted now, he'll lose his nerve. He snatches his keys up from where they hang beside the now-dead fridge. "I'll come back for the rest when you're out."

 _This is right_ , he thinks. _This is good_. He's trying not to think that it is because it will hurt who he wants to hurt in all the right ways. Merlin is not malicious, not by nature, not usually.

Arthur calls after him when he walks out the door. It's practically a bark, would verge on being an order if it didn't reek of desperation underneath. For a split second, Merlin's afraid he will turn back, give in, but he loops the giant headphones over his ears, turns up the music, and clamours down the nearest staircase two at a time.

*

True to his word, he comes by on a Tuesday morning when Arthur's at work or wherever else, with Gwen and Will at either side. He's still on autopilot, packing bags and stuffing boxes, and there's no room in his head to get sentimental about what's no longer his home, his life.

He already spoke with the landlord about the two months or so of the remaining lease. He leaves the key and the rent he still owes on the kitchen counter. At one point, on a generous impulse, he'd considered replacing the TV, the microwave, the toaster and the fridge, but that would be an admission of guilt. The maximum amount of culpability he'll ever accept for any of it is fifty percent. Even that, he thinks, is pretty damn charitable of him. Although he knows well that Arthur has never needed anybody's money for anything, Merlin slips a check under the key to cover half of any appliances he may have sabotaged. It's a small favour to his own dignity and nothing more.

*

When they get back to Gaius', Gwen holds his hand tight and makes them tea. When he tells her that he's okay, he mostly means it.

"It hasn't hit you yet," she says, and looks at him like he's a little child. Half of him wants to laugh and the other half can't stand it.

"Whatever," is his response to that because, _really_. He. Is. Fine.

He's still okay when Morgana calls and laments the loss of something that he can no longer relate to. It maybe doesn't get across so well because she's simultaneously trying not to sound like she wants to murder him over the phone.

He's a little bit less okay when he finds out, weeks later, that Arthur is never at home and not with Morgana, and then, months later, that Arthur has lost his job. Gwen stops bringing it up after a while, even in her thrown-in-there conversational way, until Merlin has to ask in an equally conversational way that is completely unconvincing even to his own ears.

He wishes he hadn't.

Merlin gradually becomes less and less okay when he finds out from Gwen who hears from a nearly hysterical Morgana that Arthur is nowhere to be found, doesn't answer her calls or emails or anything. She checked his apartment and no one has seen him in days and she's about to file a missing person's report because it's been more than a week now and he never did this unless he was busy with a deadline but even then he'd check in with _someone_ and Merlin knows this and _how can he not_ because he has only lived with the man for two years and known him better than—there's a crackle deep inside his head. It resonates somewhere close to his eardrums and he covers his ears and tells himself to _breathe._

 

The electricity bubbles in his body, in his blood, everywhere in his life until he can feel it discharge in sharp invisible lines. It raises the hairs on his skin and sets itself in motion all around him. Anything near him with wiring is fried and Gaius goes through sixteen light bulbs for his room alone for the first week until he gives up altogether and just tells Merlin to stay in one place for the love of all that is holy until he can figure something out.

He remembers it being a Friday, and overcast, and he doesn't remember much else. This is when Gwen comes over and tells him that Arthur is with Morgana now, and he clings to that so firmly that he practically misses the bit about him being found after-hours at a train station by security personnel and more than halfway towards alcohol poisoning.

Merlin doesn't even know what to make of that but he takes a seat on the living room carpet and runs a hands through his hair before bringing it to his face. This can _not_ be his fault, and it would probably be the stupidest thing to go and try to see him now but he wants what he wants even when he knows better. Morgana probably blames him anyway, and if that's the case, she probably won't let Merlin anywhere near him.

He locks his arms around his knees and he tries to breathe and breathe and breathe. Gwen sits down beside him, folds her legs to mirror his posture, and they stay like that for what feels like a very long time.

*

Gwen says he needs closure, and he thinks to himself, _why doesn't Arthur?_ Why hasn't he tried to reach Merlin instead and why does Merlin have to be the one to make a concession? At any rate, he's told that Arthur's sorting out a new life now and staying with Morgana who has made him her new project. Morgana has always terrified Merlin a little but he figures this is probably for the best. At least, he reminds himself, Arthur's with someone who cares for him properly, loves him to death and then some, and Merlin feels a little safer knowing that.

Somehow, he knows that chasing after all this closure business will just screw everything up worse. They are worlds apart now and there is no reason to collide, nothing left for them in the fallout.

*

He doesn't know how but months manage to crawl past him and it does get better. Gwen sets him up and he starts seeing people and they are all the wrong people but that's not really the issue. They are different people and that's what he thinks he needs. He hasn't done this in years and years, and he gathers that it's probably one of the hazards of a long-term relationship; you forget not only who you are but how to begin something new again.

Naturally, he's crap at all of it, but at least Arthur doesn't fill up his head with his stupidly blue eyes and his ninety-five kinds of smiles and all that Merlin's left behind, every moment of every day. Not anymore. And _that_ counts as an improvement.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

His father greets him at the doorstep of his childhood home, asks him inside with the standard, _Arthur, how have you been, and what a surprise_ , but Arthur is more than happy to stand outside. He really does not have the time for this. The only bit of new information he receives is that apparently Morgana is here as well.

"Good," Arthur says. "You can call her out. I'll need to speak with her too."

"Arthur," his father narrows his eyes. "What's this about?"

"It's about your company, and how it doesn't seem to do what it promises because I _remember_ him now."

The man has the audacity to look incredulous then. "What are you—"

"I know you don't think I'm the brightest person in the world but I can put two and two together. My father runs the place and my sister works there, so if I feel a gigantic black hole in my head, who else am I going to go to? I want to know what you did to me and I want to know how to fix it."

Morgana appears in the doorway before Uther has a chance to speak. Her eyes are red with dark circles below them, and even in this state of mind, a twinge of concern betrays him.

"Arthur," she says, sounding weary beyond her years. He wants to say something, do something, but he couldn't bring himself to yell at Morgana if he tried. He wonders if it's because a part of him always believed she'd had enough on her plate with cleaning up after his father's mistakes, and here she was, doing it again. "Let him go for now." She walks past Uther and pulls out her car keys from her handbag. "Come on. We're going for a drive."

" _Morgana_ ," Uther warns, and it's a tone Arthur knows too well. His father turns to him then, face hard and lined. "You have to know that I have always done what I have thought was best for you, for both of you."

Arthur looks at her then, searching her for an answer, because anything would be welcome right about now.

"I'm taking you to the lab," she says, and she can't bring herself to meet his eyes. "I can't undo it but I'm going to try to help you get back what you can of him."

She pulls him by the hand towards the driveway and this does not for a second stop feeling like another reality. It is confirmation of what he'd been reluctant to believe even when some of the signs had maybe made it glaringly obvious from the start.

He does not know these people, not his father, not his sister. He does not know _when_ he stopped knowing these people, and he wonders what brought it on, how bad it had to have been.

It's faint and it sounds distant now but as he gets into the car with Morgana, body moving seemingly without any input from his brain, he can still hear his father calling after them.

*

While they drive, the sting of betrayal starts to subside as he knew it eventually would. The disorientation that comes with having everything he's believed flipped on its head surprisingly seems to help somewhat. Instead of expending energy on railing against his father, he's watching the world around him. It seems to go back and forth between moving at light-speed and in slow motion, foreground and background alternating in focus.

Then there's Morgana, speeding and making sharp turns; there's a chaotic air about her, scared and wrecked. He knows that somewhere in there, she's blaming herself for everything, and it goes beyond the guilt. He has seen her like this once before and like a red light in his head, the memory halts all thought. If he was in a better mood, he would maybe have laughed at the irony of it. Instead, he looks at Morgana who is trying so hard to hold it together. He wants to say, _please don't do this to yourself._ Everything they did to each other, for each other, came full circle in the end.

"You found your file, didn't you?"

He probably should have waited for a stop sign or something because she slams the brakes in the middle of a small street. "You knew?"

"Of course I knew." He takes in a lungful of air and lets it out, figures why not since it seems fashionable right now to give some fresh air to the skeletons in their closets. "I signed you up."

Maybe it's a testament to just how much she has taken in these past few days that he only catches glimpses of emotions flitting across her face and nothing further follows. She doesn't lash out like he had half-expected. She doesn't hate him like he had feared ever since the night he'd kissed her on forehead, put her to bed, and turned on the monitors. He'd stood though the night and told himself that it would be the first and last erasure he would witness in his life.

"I guess we're even now." Her eyes are on the road and he can see her throat working but the words hold no resentment, only truth.

*

**|►morgana|**

She tries to log in from a peripheral computer and after the fifth failed attempt, she's ready to run the heel of her shoe through the screen. She can't even access her email, can't reach tech support or get anywhere near the electronic records. She thinks she should have just printed out everything when she'd had the chance in Uther's office. Turns out, Uther has cancelled her authorization and won't let her into anything.

She tries again from her office computer and makes a few calls in vain. After the seventh time someone tells her to fuck off in polite terms, she rests her elbows on her table and her head in her hands. She gives herself a few seconds, a few deep, solid breaths, and she's at it again.

Arthur's been looking out the window all this time, forehead pressed against the pane and watching the snow fall and fall.

"Listen," he says now, quiet, unsure, "maybe we shouldn't—"

"No," she says distractedly, dialling another number. "You are here and you are not leaving until—" she pauses, hanging up the phone and moving to stand beside him now. "Do you not want to know? Because I thought—but if you don't, I'll respect that, and I can see why you wouldn't."

Arthur takes a long breath which becomes more of a shudder than anything by the time the air leaves him. "Morgana," he says, "I don't know what to do."

He's close enough that she doesn't have to move much to draw him in and hold him, snug and secure, even as her arms are thin and have half the strength of his. She can hear him swallow, the click of it close to her ear.

"If we were such a disaster before," he says, "who's to say..."

"I'm not going to lie to you." _No_ , she thinks, _not to you, not anymore_. "It _will_ change things. There is no way of pretending it won't, but the choice is yours. Fresh starts and blank slates are nice in theory but I think you are always going to wonder what went wrong the first time. And," she looks up at him, "knowing you, it will slowly drive you insane."

"What about him?" Arthur says, staring at a fixed point on the wall and his eyes give nothing away. "He had me erased too, didn't he?"

"He tried, Arthur. It didn't work for him." And there's no other way of saying it that she can think of. "He's different, special, strange and wonderful, but I think you already know that. As to what happens now, you'll figure it out. You both will. And even though I've been spectacularly awful at it, I'll be here whether you need me or not."

From a drawer, she pulls out a sealed manila envelope. It has _EMRYSMR6302_ written across the flap in her handwriting. It took her three nights of dodging security but she'd managed to get his audiotape and his letters. There were some photographs she'd found when she'd first cleaned out Arthur's old apartment. There were a few she had kept because she couldn't bear to tear them up or throw them away. Once, she had maintained that nostalgia was overrated. Looking back, she'd never really been as immune to it as she'd thought.

She hands the envelope over to him now, and says, "It's nowhere as thorough as your electronic records but it's something and it's real."

Arthur takes it and looks as if he has no idea what to do with it, which, granted, he probably doesn't. "Do I really want to open this?"

"I'm sorry," and she knows she doesn't have to say it, not again, because it's probably going to be written in every muscle and bone, every move she makes for a very long time. It's more than _I'm sorry for screwing up your life in more ways that one_. It is, _I'm sorry because_ , "As much as I wish I could, I can't answer that for you."

Finally, it is _I'm sorry I can't fix it and I'm sorry I can't take this from you and bear it for you but I love you and I need you to please, please be okay_.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

Mostly, he is terrified.

This thread is so fragile, he knows. Just as he knows that it's safer without the answers. Even if it means he will be living with a question mark etched onto his mind until, perhaps, the end of his days, it's the cleaner, maybe even easier way out. The route that promises minimal damage.

The problem is, in spite of that, a part of him is convinced that no matter how catastrophically he'd managed to screw it up last time, he needs to know every bit of what happened. Even if his dreams stop chasing him out of sleep and Merlin manages to not short-circuit his uncle's entire apartment, ignorance no longer seems like a viable option. Arthur needs to know what went right and what went wrong and, even if he can only speak for himself, he is willing to learn. He can't think of how else he is supposed to carry on this...whatever it is that he has with Merlin now. He hardly even knows what to call it anymore. (There's that part of his mind again, that quiet thing that's buried deep, that isn't terrified when lights explode in sparks around him, the one that makes his dreams seem less bizarre. It speaks to him now, loud and unmistakable.) What he knows is that he can _not_ let it go.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

When he'd woken up alone and had the time and enough clarity to mentally backtrack, it occurred to him that something _had_ been happening for some time now. It was a faint wisp of knowledge, hovering at the periphery and whispering that he was different somehow, always would be, even if he would never know why.

It's evening by the time he switches on one of the table-lamps in the living room. If his theory is to be proven then this is maybe one way to go about it, and if it is correct, this should work. He removes the shade and stares at the bare bulb with his full concentration and wills it to explode. It does not listen. He tries the bathroom light next. Nothing.

He's about to go for the hallway light, even as he's still a little wary that something is wrong with that one inherently, when the apartment buzzer goes off.

*

"You can't be serious," Merlin says, and tries very, very hard to keep his head on straight because there has got to be a perfectly rational explanation for why Arthur is convinced that the two of them were practically married in something of a past life. The explanation has not yet made itself clear to Merlin but he figures if he waits long enough it will come. There is no way his mind is equipped to deal with all of this in the span of twenty-four hours. First the accidental electrokinesis or whatever that was, and now Morgana putting _her own brother_ under erasure?

"Arthur," he says, with more calm than he feels, "I think you might be in shock. Yesterday was weird, I know, and I'm still trying to figure it out, Just give me some time and it will make sense."

There's resignation in Arthur's eyes and the line of his mouth when he pulls out a photograph from an envelope and hands it to Merlin.

It has half of Arthur's face peeking out from behind his own with Arthur's chin on Merlin's shoulder. Both faces grin at him from between hats and Arthur's raised collar and the candy-cane scarf that Gwen had knit for him many Christmases ago. It's the kind of off-centered close-up that results when holding out the camera to take a picture of yourself. Merlin can tell it was taken on a winter night because the sky stretches dim and purple behind them, pale with the reflection of snow, and on the ground, the snow seems to go on forever.

They haven't taken any pictures as far as he remembers. Even then, he can buy it as a practical joke, something photoshopped by someone, maybe Arthur's sister, to screw with his head. He flips it on its back and it reads, _Charles River 2001_ , in Merlin's own scrunched up handwriting, and that's the very quiet start of when everything begins to fall apart.

"I met you in September at a record store," Arthur says, quiet and still. The words sound garbled to Merlin's ears. "We haven't been to the Charles. What am I supposed to think?"

Arthur reaches for his hand, the one that had been burnt, fingers clasping around the lightning bolt bracelet. "I know you're going to think I'm crazy. I'm pretty sure _I_ think I'm crazy, but I got you this because it reminded me of you. It reminded me of how you set off everything around you when you got angry or scared, when you felt anything to an extreme. Merlin, you have no idea what you're capable of."

It sounds so strange to have Arthur say it, and Merlin can't tell for sure if it's lamentation or awe that his voice veers closer to. Either way, Merlin does not want it. He shakes his head, gently at first, and when the godforsaken buzzing returns, he digs his fingers in his hair until they press in on his skull. This is what it feels like once it gets going, growing into a pulse, which turns into a throbbing and he can practically feel the blood beat below his fingertips. He can feel himself being pulled from the sidelines into the eye of the storm, dragged by his insides into some sort of black hole. It is _infinitely_ worse than the previous night, so much so that he thinks it will be a small wonder if his head does not explode by the end of it. Or, at the least, if he doesn't get sick. Instead, the lights go out, _again_ , every single one in sight and then some until the apartment is bathed completely in darkness.

"Your eyes," Arthur says, a distant sound that Merlin has to strain to hear, "they're gold, Merlin. I _remember_ this—" but Merlin's barely listening now and finds it impossible to register the rest of what Arthur's on about, not with the starburst of pain that he's convinced will kill him.

"Call Gwen," he cries out. "Fuck, _Arthur_ , just _please_ —call her and tell her to call Gaius, or page him or _something_." It's all he can manage to say before he feels a sudden chill that comes without warning and reaches him bone-deep. In the dark, there are shadows and half-there images, bare branches and snow all around and ice beneath him. It's a time and space so separate from this.

He closes his eyes and can feel the flutter of lashes close to his face, the wool of a coat, a scarf, and then warmth and warmth, inside and out, a faraway feeling that competes with the headache from hell.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2003-2004|►|**

 

He's watching CSI reruns with Will and Gwen one night when Gaius comes back from work, bringing boxes of papers and stationary inside. His uncle's mouth is set in a straight, tight line.

 _No_ , thinks Merlin, dragging Gaius into the hallway. _There is no way._ "If you tell me that Uther fired you, I will go there and torch that place down."

"No, Merlin," Gaius shakes his head, deflated. "I left. It was a mutual decision."

Merlin knows that at least a part of him should be happy, that this is what he'd wanted, for Gaius to extricate himself from that twisted, wretched business as soon as possible. Still, it's like being doused with ice water. "What _happened_?"

"We had a..." and as Gaius tries to find a word, Merlin wants to scream because, _of course_ , even now, he would try for diplomacy, "...disagreement," Gaius decides, "of professional opinion."

"Let me rephrase, Gaius, what the hell happened _exactly_?"

"It was a personal matter for Uther and there's patient confidentiality involved, Merlin." Even as he says it, Gaius looks extremely pained. It's one of those would-if-I-could looks but it doesn't make Merlin any less furious. He tells Merlin not to worry, that he still has the research at the university and two clinical practice offers from their teaching hospitals, but Merlin knows that's not the point.

*

Several days later, he's walking down 34th Street when he thinks he sees them. The panic doesn't set in until he's _sure_ it's them, and then, he almost can't breathe for a moment. Morgana and Arthur are not more than five feet away when Morgana catches sight of him, and Merlin thinks, maybe, after all this time, the three of them should be able to talk like civilized adults on the street.

"Arthur," he nods, stopping in front of them. He can't even remember how long it's been, only that seeing him again is nothing like the way he'd imagined it the twenty thousand or so times in his head.

Arthur smiles his polite and formal smile, guarded with care and devoid of recognition. This should have been warning enough but then Arthur adds, "Have we met?" and Merlin knows that something is _very_ wrong.

"Very funny," Merlin says, trying not to panic, and looks at Morgana. "What's going on? Is he alright?"

"Arthur," she says firmly, "could you give us a minute?" Without waiting for a response, she manhandles Merlin towards the street corner and in the most chilling hiss he's ever heard, she says, "You are going to leave him alone, understand? I do not want him near you and I do not want you near him ever again."

And there it is. Confirmation. He didn't ask to become the bane of Morgana's existence and yet it makes such perfect sense that he can't even fault her for it. He wants to ask what _happened_ but, of course, it clicks. This is Morgana Le Fay, who is loyal to her family, and who works for Camelot Neuroservices where she wipes people's minds clean for a living.

Merlin feels light-headed at the thought.

"You're twisted," he rasps out, even if it is maybe starting to make sense. He knows Morgana has had a rough time of the past year or so but he had always considered her the most human of that corporate neuro-psycho-whatever-services lot, even more so than Gaius at times. And here, even that piece of the puzzle falls into place. _This_ is why Gaius left. It had to be. He would have been staunchly against Arthur as a candidate. He wouldn't have even entertained the thought whereas Uther doubtlessly would have if it had meant one more shot at mind control over his son. "I can't believe you, Morgana. He's your brother."

"So you can understand why it was necessary."

He wants to hate her for it but under all the ice of her glare, he can see how much she's hurting. Maybe knowledge is power but he doesn't feel all that powerful because he also knows what she does not, that she was not this person once, deep down is maybe still not this person, but she is trying to be strong and solid for something and someone she needs to protect. It's the means to an end kind of logic that he can't quite agree or argue with. He doesn't have to like it but the look in her eyes and the line of her jaw are relentless so he knows that he will have to live with it.

"I get it. You don't want me to hurt him." The words are his, he knows, but they feel like someone else's, spoken from the other side of the street. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Arthur looking inside a storefront window, a display of children's clothing in what he thinks is a Baby Gap, and Merlin feels something like vertigo at the thought of everything disappearing.

"Good seeing you Morgana," and he closes his eyes against the image of the man on the west side of 34th Street who is a perfect stranger now, and he walks and walks and walks, trying to widen the gap in between.

*

He wonders how it works and he doesn't mean the technicalities. He has heard about all that from Gaius and bits and pieces from Arthur who had been forced to sit through dinner conversations that revolved around procedure upgrades with Morgana and his father. Already, they feel like moments from a past life.

Instead, he wonders what it would be like to wake up the next morning after going through something like that, wonders if it would be like any other morning, and spends his time wondering because it's easier than feeling like someone else's bad dream.

*

The note in the mail comes a few days after. It's nothing new, just further confirmation of what he already knows.

_Dear Dr. Gaius Richards,_

Arthur Pendragon has had Merlin Emrys erased from his memory. Please never mention their relationship to him again.

Thank you.

Sincerely,  
Morgana Le Fay  
Laboratory and Clinical Procedures Coordinator  
Camelot Neuroservices

*

Merlin will deny two things forever. The first is that Morgana's note was what finally drove him to sit in the waiting room at Camelot Neuroservices. The second is that it was all done in a reckless fit of retaliation.

It was a complete waste of his time anyway.

It left him more like the frayed-at-the-edges loose cannon he'd been when he'd first come to live with Gaius some twenty years ago. Back then, he'd been young and new at all of this, known nothing of his power or how to manage it. Now, he couldn't think of an excuse, except for the obvious one, but he wasn't willing to give Arthur any more credit for screwing him up.

*

Merlin's pretty sure Gaius is sick of buying light bulbs because Merlin is sure as hell sick of changing them. _Light bulbs_ , he had once told Arthur, _are somehow always the first to go._

His neighbours have been in an uproar and maintenance is torn between wanting to rewire the whole place and just quitting altogether. Everyone calls the building cursed, the seventh floor especially, because they'd been through this once before some twenty years ago. Those who'd been here that long remember vividly the electrical disasters this place had suffered when Merlin first moved in.

Gaius really should've just bought himself a detached house or an island or something before volunteering to have someone like Merlin live with him and to help tame his gift from hell. Once, when he'd voiced this to his uncle, the man had told him that this kind of life would force him to be accommodating, that it would help him get there faster because he would know that what he had would also affect others around him. Unfortunately, Merlin wasn't a completely selfish prick (though, sometimes, he really wished he was because it would have made the whole thing with Arthur so much easier to clean up and faster too) and Gaius had been right.

After that useless attempt at erasure, however, he finds he can't really be very accommodating because this _thing_ in his head is no longer being very accommodating. Try as he might to deny it, he's never been behind the wheel in difficult times. He is well aware that he's losing the careful grip on his mind, the one he'd spent a lifetime of practice managing and ensuring that he had mastered as best he could. It had been either that or letting the world around him sizzle and go up in smoke. There was never a no rulebook for what to do when your mind had a mind of its own and adamantly _refused_ to listen to you, when all it was good for anymore was turning against you at inopportune moments, throwing shocks and flashes of light and current. He tries so hard to it _in, in, in,_ so afraid he might burst if he doesn't, until, one day, he can't.

*

He will never know if it was him trying to shut his mind up or the other way around when it had happened. He'd stood by the kitchen table, a knife in hand, and dug it as deep as it could go in the electric socket on the wall. His last thought had been something along the lines of _please let me go,_ and it had all ended in a spectacle of white light, followed by something like a seizure, and Merlin on the floor.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

Merlin wakes up the next morning to find Gaius sitting by the side of his bed. There's daylight outside and something about the way everything looks right now reminds him of when he'd woken up that day three months ago with Gwen picking up his books and trying to keep herself calm. One day, he's going to have to buy her a craft store, and even then, maybe _start_ making up for everything he put her through.

Seeing he's awake, Gaius chuckles to himself. "I take it you gave yourself quite a scare."

"Well," Merlin thinks aloud, "you seem fairly blasé about all this."

"I was just thinking it was about time. I was also thinking that when my nephew blacks out, he goes big, takes all the power of the city with him for the night," and Gaius sounds almost proud. "Gwen's in the kitchen by the way, making you tea."

Good. He needs to see Gwen.

Before Merlin can ask, Gaius supplies, "Arthur said he would be back later."

And Merlin has _no_ idea how he is going to deal with that.

 

________________________________

 

**|◄◄|2001|►arthur|forgotten|**

Arthur has always considered himself relatively sane and so it follows that he doesn't believe in stepping on ice with cracks under it, branching out to ten feet in some places.

However, because it is Merlin he's with, Merlin who is walking backwards on the frozen river as he speaks, calling Arthur a big baby, Arthur crosses the line over to the realm of what he's sure is pure madness.

Needless to say, he slips and falls so many times that Merlin claims to have lost count. Once he finally manages to cross the distance, there's a final fall. He's determined to not go down alone, not this time, so he grabs on to Merlin's candy-cane striped scarf and drags Merlin down with him, on top of him, and they collapse on top of the frozen Charles. Arthur spares a quick thought to the small wonder that the ice hasn't split all the way through.

There's snow caught in Merlin's lashes and red spots high up on his cheeks when Arthur pulls him in with a hand to the back of his head. Their breaths mingle in smoky puffs against the night air and the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is a smile that lights up Merlin's entire face in one great, soft glow.

If Arthur had to pick one thing to keep, to remember from this night—from _everything_ —this would be it. If he could, he would lock it up and hide it away, somewhere secret, some place safe.

**|►►|2004**

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

He doesn't think it's fair. Arthur could go and wipe him out and come out of it without a scratch. One kiss from Merlin and one photograph from his sister, some stolen files from his father and he gets back what he wants of it. Merlin doesn't understand it. He had to lose more than just his memory, so much more. He had to lose himself before he could even start.

He makes a point to speak with Gwen before she leaves, hating that it's become such a pattern, with everyone screwing up and losing it and Gwen cleaning up after them with her warmth and her words and her tea. He starts off with thanking her for the tea and he's about to start on a long-winded apology along the lines of _I'm sorry I've been such a whiny little girl_ when she stops him with a finger to his lips and an, "I told you once that you don't need to apologize to me for anything. Ever."

"Gwen—"

"Just, try to be okay. That's all I ask. Stay okay for me and take care of yourself. That's how you can make it up to me."

He nods and it's a bit shaky. He can't make any promises but, for her, he says he'll try.

They leave him alone by the time Arthur makes it back and Merlin expects jagged edges, awkwardness and spite. He gets this instead.

"So you remember all of it?" Arthur says from the door.

Merlin mumbles, "More than enough," from his vantage point, and lets the back of his head hit the wall beside his bed. He blames it on the exhaustion, feels drenched to the bone with it, and it brings with it a distance, a sort of apathy that he knows is dangerous but cannot quite help.

"Merlin," Arthur starts but doesn't seem to know where to go with it. All right, so there is a little bit of awkwardness. Merlin doubts either of them know how to address any of it anymore but Arthur is trying and maybe a little (or a lot) harder, and Merlin thinks he should probably give him some credit for that.

If there had ever been a time since the beginning of _them,_ his one shot to talk himself out of the ridiculous mess that is getting involved with Arthur Pendragon, this would maybe be it. Part of him knows it's now or never and yes, maybe, if he tries a little bit—right now and only now would be the only window where he wouldn't have to try very hard—he thinks he might be able to walk away from this. The thing is that he can't decide if it's a moment of clarity or quite the opposite. It's just like how he can't decide if he wants it to pass or he is afraid that it will.

Arthur's saying his name again. Possibly, it's because he looks distracted, feels distracted. Underneath the thin layer of indifference and fatigue, it's fresh in his mind like an old wound gouged open for the second time. There is always so much noise in his head, voices rising, echoing back and forth until they grow hoarse. It starts softly like the fading in of a drumbeat, a growing pulse, until it becomes increasingly difficult to focus on anything else. He can't even tell them apart in his head anymore, his words from Arthur's; it's as if they have clumped together in the crossfire and taken on a life of their own.

Even in the chill, in the shouting and the silence, there was warmth, somewhere, he knows. Or, at least, he believes that there was supposed to be even if it got lost along the way. It's like the way he knows it down to his bones that from deep within the words they'd flung in raised voices, shreds of blunt honesty had also managed to escape. They were the things they could not have shared any other way, half-secrets and angry confessions and declarations of love left forgotten amidst the mess of their aftermath.

When he looks up at Arthur, it's to make a request: "Can I see you later?" Arthur nods and schools his features into something neutral. It's when Arthur is practically out the door that Merlin feels a sudden sense of panic, and he adds in a rush and half hates himself for it, "I'm sorry, I just—"

"Need some space," Arthur supplies. "I get that. It's fine. We can talk about it later."

And Merlin wonders, _what if I don't ever want to talk about it?_ What he wants is to ask Arthur to just come back and sit here, close, and not speak for a while.

"Thanks," he says,and tries to make it sound sincere.

 

________________________________

 

**|►arthur|**

It has to have been the first meal they've had in months if not years that didn't have to do with business or Morgana.

When Morgana does come up, as Arthur knew she inevitably would, Uther finally voices it. His father is afraid that she'll never forgive him and he will lose someone yet again, and how _will_ the company ever function without her.  
"You need to close that chapter," Arthur says, and, without additional preamble because he knows what it's about, what it has _always_ been about, "mom's been dead over twenty years now and she's not coming back."

His father drops his fork at that and Arthur preempts whatever lecture he has coming on with, "I know you miss her but you're not alone. I know you're in pain _all the time_ but you have things in your life that matter. You have me and you have Morgana." _We will never measure up,_ he does not say, _but we will try to make your life worthwhile._

"You both despise me," and his father says it like he means it and this is probably the most aggravating bit of it all.

"We don't. I was upset. Morgana is still upset but she will come around. You mean well, I _know_ you do. I don't like what you do but I can defend it. I spent all my life defending it, defending _you_ , but for once, just stop being a boss and start being a father. It's not too late." His father looks ready to deny it but Arthur goes on, he has to. Even after everything, Arthur can sympathize with the man but _this_ —he's held this in for over twenty years. "You say you started this company to cure people of their grief, of their loss, but there was a reason you couldn't forget her, couldn't bring yourself to erase her from your life."

Uther slams a heavy hand on the table. "Erasing _her_ would have meant erasing _you_ ," he roars, eyes shining. "Do you have _any idea_ how much you look like her? How much you remind me of her? Every single day of my life?"

This is not what Arthur needs to hear. Hell, this isn't what any of this is about. He's pretty sure that his father is just sidetracking them, keeping him from pressing his point. "You couldn't erase her because you weren't meant to," and Arthur has always believed this with every fibre of his being and he _knows_ for a fact that his father does too. "She was the love of your life for a reason. You would take the pain if it meant holding on to the memory, because the memory was a reminder that it had happened. Nothing would have been worse for you than never having had that love."

His father is visibly breaking by the end of it and even if it hurts to watch, Arthur knows it has to happen. Only then can there be something new.

Arthur leaves his spot on the table to cross the distance and kneel beside him then. This was the man who had sworn off vulnerability and vowed that the first time he had been wronged by his life would be the last.

Arthur looks up at him now, and whispers, "I miss her too. I miss her so much. I know how much you loved her, love her even now. And I know that there are people who come to you and need real help but you have to know that this is not the way to give it."

*

He has given Merlin a week and he knows that, logically, it could go either way. It might be enough time just as there might never be enough time.

He makes the call anyhow and, on the bright side of things, Merlin doesn't sound entirely too dismayed at the sound of his voice.

"I want to see you," Arthur says, because he has always been completely useless with small talk.

"Maybe we can arrange that. Meet me at Penn Station if you're free around three."

And Arthur is and Arthur does, telling his nerves all the while that this is no time for them to be so transparent.

When he finds Merlin, it's to be handed a train ticket. "We're going to Montauk," he says in answer to Arthur's look. "You probably don't remember it now but we used to go in the middle of winter every year."

Arthur wants to say that he thinks he dreamt about it once but he doubts that counts. And because he can't keep from asking any longer, can't care how abrupt or desperate it may seem or sound, he comes right out with it. "Are we okay?"

Merlin gives him a long, searching look and Arthur can only hope that he finds whatever it is he's looking for. "I'm still trying to figure that out."

*

The ride to the tip of Long Island takes over three hours.

The ground between them is uncertain and Arthur is well aware but Merlin doesn't seem to take issue with nodding off, head falling onto Arthur's shoulder. Arthur can feel himself tense up at first but sees no real point in it. He can't clear his head and can't focus on any one thing so he tries to focus on this weight, this press of a body along his arm and shoulder. It's not even close to heavy and there is hardly any warmth to it because Merlin is wearing this ridiculous lumpy coat that's bright blue and cool to the touch.

He feels suddenly weary of carting this constant sense of trepidation around. He tells himself that worrying won't do him any good, never has, and he doesn't quite realize that he's resting his head on top of Merlin's or that he has managed to tangle their fingers together.

It doesn't exactly jolt him to notice, doesn't really do much of anything at all except maybe Morgana's babbling runs through his head, bits and pieces of habituation and implicit and explicit memory, among other things he'd never consciously paid attention to. Except, this was it, wasn't it? This was motor memory; it had to be. It explained hands reaching out without thinking, heart racing without any explanation, and all the ways of seeking old means of comfort, positions that didn't feel practiced but they fit just because it was the only way they knew and the only way they'd been.

 _And is that all it is_ , he wonders, _all you are, and all I am?_ _Bad habits we can't break?_

Arthur doesn't want to dwell upon it anymore and so he closes his eyes and winces a moment later when the sun hits him in the face. It pokes out from between the trees, low in the sky, now that all the high-rises are behind them.

Merlin, closer to the window, burrows deeper against his side in an unconscious attempt to hide away from the sun. And Arthur knows that when something tightens in his chest at the sight, clinches so close to his throat that it could easily cut off his air, it is more than acquired instinct or heavily-rehearsed emotion. He pulls the hood of Merlin's jacket over the mess of his hair, and tugs it so it covers the side of his face hit by the sun. When he's done, and because he can, he lets his hand linger.

*

They walk the distance towards the abandoned beach and Merlin looks out at the shore where frigid water hits frozen land. "So," he says, voice drowning out a little against the crash of the waves. "Where do we go from here?"

Arthur closes his eyes and tries to take in the feel of this place, to see if it triggers a memory, especially if what Merlin had said about them coming here every year was true. To Merlin's question, he adds another. "Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere but back to that. It ended horribly enough last time."

"It did," he concedes, because there is nowhere around it. He knows that his bias shows when he adds, "but it was different last time."

"Was it?" Merlin asks, face impassive. "Last time, I was a bit of a freak. I'm still the same."

" _That_ was never the problem," and Arthur knows he needs to make this one thing clear. "Last time, I tried to figure it all out by myself. I was proud and I was scared," and he adds, soft, quiet, "Thought you knew that about me."

Merlin looks at him then, eyes searching endlessly for what Arthur thinks is something like acknowledgment of what had happened to them, something real and pure and true. Meeting his eyes makes it difficult to breathe but Arthur swallows hard and perseveres.

"I'd thought that because it was _my_ family, it was my job to fix it. I'd thought that I was doing you a favour by keeping you out of it, that I didn't need your help." He looks up at the sky, searching for leftover daylight. The last streaks seem to disappear faster than he can catch them. "I know now," he says at last, and there's loss and longing mingling together, in his lungs, in the air, everywhere, "that it was a mistake."

"It was," Merlin agrees, and there's a harsh, self-deprecating laugh that would have been so unlike him once. "All I wanted was to be your family."

 

________________________________

 

**|►morgana|**

She was born self-aware and Gwen and Arthur had honed her into her sharp-tongued, perfect-postured self over the course of their lives. They made sure she kept her head high and her spine of stainless-steel. She likes to think she is a strong woman but she does not harbour any delusions of invincibility. She knows deep down what can break her because she has had her share of suffering. Occasionally, she finds it strangely liberating because, this way, there is little to fear.

She thinks about her own experience, with disasters, with erasures, and decides that these things do not ever leave. _They make us who we are._ And she can't help but feel that Merlin and Arthur knew, maybe not superficially, but a small, secret part of them _must_ haveknown where and how to find each other. It's almost like instinct. She'd stayed away from the things that would hurt her for all the years after her erasure, stayed away from men and sex and pregnancy and anything to do with it. And all the while, she had found herself aching, sitting outside schools or parks, watching mothers with strollers or boys and girls in their arms, by their sides, holding hands, and she'd found herself longing for a feeling she could not name, never knowing why. She'd thought it was because she missed her parents; it had seemed like reason enough for the unwarranted emotion, never mind that it was years too late.

And sometimes, she wonders how Uther might have managed it, sitting through the collapse of the lives of both his children, one life-shattering mental breakdown apiece, all on top of the death of the love of his life.

She has only ever had good intentions and, as much as she hates to admit it, she and Uther are very much alike. She knows the road to hell almost intimately. She has paced and done circles on it, hands on her stomach, feeling hollow and guilty like she failed someone who never had a chance of his own.

She has walked inside other people's heads and hearts as they let her in through their voices and their letters and their recollections. They handed everything over to her and asked her to press a button to cure them of it all. It had been easy, pulling the trigger on their past lives. They'd asked for it and she was helping them, healing them, saving them.

She knows it well, the path, and where it leads.

She only realizes now that the memories were a temporary loan of sorts, the kind that her clients had no room in their heads for at the time, and so they had been left in her care for safekeeping. Now, she knows, she owes them back.

*

When she gives her two weeks notice to Uther, he surprises her with news of his own.

He tells her he's retiring and it's her call now. "You can stay and run it how you like or you can leave and I'll shut it down." She thinks to ask what brought this upon but doesn't want to run the risk of questioning it, changing it. "If you choose to keep it running, I have a suggestion that you can feel free to use or discard."

She takes it.

 

________________________________

 

**|►merlin|**

He's at the record store and there must be some raincloud vibe he's giving off because Freya does that thing where she's trying to cheer him up without making it obvious.

"I saw Maria the other day," she says, "with her _real_ Uncle." And Merlin had been wondering what had happened to that girl. "He bought her the Franz Ferdinand. I thought that would give her a few more points in your book. She also said hello, said she missed the guy who should have been the magician's assistant for her Uncle Arthur."

He laughs softly at that even if it's difficult right now to not be overcome with everything that's changed since then.

*

This time, they go to the Charles, and Merlin wants to add, _for real._ He knows it was real before, has photographic evidence to prove it, but Arthur doesn't remember and so it doesn't count.

He doesn't quite know what he's doing either, dragging Arthur to these places that he barely remembers. He thinks if he can attach the person and the place, put the two together, he can fix something, or, at the least, extricate the good parts from the madness.

(It will take time but he thinks that maybe they could get there.)

And maybe there is something about the Charles after all because Arthur asks why there are no cracks, and Merlin wonders aloud, "You remember the cracks?"

"There were _always_ cracks."

"So tell me." It shouldn't matter as much as it does but he asks because he needs to know. "How much do you remember?"

"I don't know. Bits and pieces. Morgana said it would be a while, and even then," he shoots an apologetic look Merlin's way, "no guarantees."

Merlin eyes him carefully. "Do you remember when we met?"

Arthur laughs, and it's a warm, assuring sound. "The first time? You were paying attention to everything but me."

"I was listening to New Radicals," And Merlin can't fight off the grin if he tried. "They used to be the cool thing back then."

"And reading," Arthur adds, "on Gwen's bed. Your junior year. My senior."

"What were you thinking?" Merlin inches forward, and his hand reaches for the lapel of Arthur's coat before he can stop it. He pulls them closer, huddling to keep the warmth in.

It's one of those questions that can go so far back that it becomes all-encompassing. _What were you thinking, falling for someone like me? Throwing it away? Wanting it back after everything? What were you thinking, Arthur? Were you even thinking?_

"That you were so strange." Arthur tilts his head, and they're at angles to each other, the space between them like the air before and after a kiss; there's something of a gravity about it on its own.

"And what are you thinking now?" Merlin asks, because he can.

"I am thinking," says Arthur, so quiet that it's hard to hear, "if there is any way to keep this."

When it comes down to it, there is nothing specific about any of this, the here or the now, that makes up Merlin's mind. What it amounts to is that this is what it is, who he is, who they are. It can't be imagined any other way, and if it can, Merlin wants nothing to do with that reality.

"There might be," Merlin says, but this time, he has an ultimatum. "You'll need to sign a contract though. I don't appreciate being erased. So no matter how hard it gets," _or_ _how badly it ends_ , he thinks, _if or when it does_ , "you have to promise me that you will try to remember. Remember me," Merlin holds out his little finger, "and remember us. Can you do that?"

"Yes sir," and Arthur's words are warm, warmer than his lips against the pad of Merlin's little finger.

 

________________________________

 

**|►gwen|**

It comes entirely out of left field over lunch at a new Greek restaurant that recently opened near Morgana's place.

"So I'm taking over Camelot," Morgana says.

Gwen has to stop and make sure she's heard it right. "Uther's Camelot?"

"Yes, only that now it will be run my way. It's going to be a grief counselling centre, with _real_ therapy. No more of this forgetting what you can't deal with. And here's the punchline: Uther suggested it." Gwen was not expecting _that_ at all.

Morgana goes on about how she has some staff in mind and she thinks she'll ask Gaius if he wants to return to conducting assessments. Watching her as she gets excited about this is a joy of its own kind.

"I have another piece of news," and this, Morgana says more tentatively, and she reaches across the table for Gwen's hand as she does. "This is the first time I'm saying it out loud. You're the first one I've told. I was thinking...I want to go talk to my doctor. Just to, you know, talk about my options. I think," she hesitates, "I think I want to try again."

"Morgana," Gwen sighs, feeling something sink and it's not long before she can tell it's her own heart dropping in her chest and all on Morgana's behalf. "Have you thought this through? I think you know that it's not something you want to rush into, not on a whim."

Morgana shrugs and her laugh is nervous, so foreign on her face. "I know it's hard to explain, I do. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and this is not me being my crazy, obsessive self. It just feels right, Gwen. I wanted to know if you'd like to come with me."

Gwen crosses over to Morgana's side of the table, squeezes in beside her in the booth, and takes her hand. "Do you really need to ask?" And Morgana shakes her head.

Gwen thinks of how lucky they are. It's a cold day in December and they can hardly feel it; they have each other and all the warmth in the world. Together, they watch the people from their window-seat in the little Greek restaurant and it's like watching the world turn, but always mindful of the other from the corner of your eye. __

I've got you, Gwen says with a look, and Morgana smiles, weaving their fingers together.

 

________________________________

 

**|►►|December 31, 2004 – January 1, 2005|►all|**

In the end, they decide to call it a beginning.

They sit together for the first time (but really, if they were keeping track, they've probably lost count). They start as fresh as they can with the past a faded watermark. Of course, the memories are still there, somewhere and everywhere, and they are marked by them in ways that they can't ignore.

In time, they find, they don't have to.

*

♫ **| end**


End file.
